The Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court has acquitted Isabel Martinón of the crime of prevarication for which she had been convicted in the Inelcon case, one of the parts of the Montecarlo case.
In a judicial ruling issued on September 17, the high court admitted the appeal filed by the defense of the former councilor of Arrecife and revoked the conviction issued by the Sixth Section of the Provincial Court of Las Palmas against her.
The Court had sentenced Isabel Martinón in 2022 for signing three payment orders valued at 55,566 euros to two companies and stated that the then Finance Councilor knew "the defects of the processing of the invoices". Martinón was sentenced to seven years of special disqualification from public employment or office and to pay one tenth of the court costs.
"Serious descriptive deficit" in the conviction
In the judicial resolution that revokes this conviction and to which La Voz has had access, the Supreme Court has pointed out the "descriptive incompleteness" and the lack of precision in the description of the proven facts on which the conviction was based.
The judicial body has confirmed that the facts "are manifestly incomplete" and prevent the Court from knowing "from what requirements the appellant deviated". At the same time, the high court has alluded to a "serious descriptive deficit" in said judicial ruling.
In this sense, the Chamber has indicated that it cannot "evaluate whether the requirements are met" to consider that Martinón committed a crime of administrative prevarication, since the Supreme Court is unaware "in an absolute way of the defects" that the court analyzed to ensure that the then Finance Councilor could not authorize the payment of the invoices that led to her conviction.
Meanwhile, the Chamber has defended that Martinón's action "conformed to her obligations within the accounting file" and has added that, in addition, the invoiced works did not affect the patrimonial interests of the Arrecife City Council, since they were executed and their amount "adjusted to the market value".
Two convicted and nine acquitted
Isabel Martinón and Carlos Francisco Sáenz, auditor of the Arrecife City Council, were the only ones convicted in this part of the Montecarlo case. This case investigated the crimes of administrative prevarication, embezzlement of public funds, fraud against the administration, falsification of public documents and falsification of private documents against both and nine other people, who were acquitted.
The Provincial Court had considered it proven that Francisco Sáenz signed the accounting documents that recognized the payment of invoices to two companies "without verifying, failing to fulfill the duties inherent to his position". After that, Martinón gave the go-ahead to the payment of the invoices. After the Supreme Court ruling, Carlos Sáenz is the only one convicted of this case.
