The Supreme Court has agreed to refer to a court in El Vendrell (Tarragona) the case it had kept open against the former Sumar MP Félix Alonso Cantorné for an alleged crime of prevarication, after he has ceased to be eligible for prosecution privileges as a result of the early general election.
In an order that Europa Press has had access to, the investigating judge, Vicente Magro, states that the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court no longer has objective jurisdiction to continue with the proceedings and orders that the procedure be returned to the court of origin.
The Supreme Court had been investigating Cantorné since last April, after receiving a reasoned submission from the courts of El Vendrell, which had initiated preliminary proceedings before the then MP acquired the status of being eligible for prosecution privileges.
The investigation focuses on several contracts formalized by the Ayuntamiento de Altafulla, the municipality of which Cantorné was mayor between 2011 and 2019, with different companies that, allegedly, did not comply with public procurement regulations.
According to what the Criminal Chamber of the high court set out, “presumably, to give the appearance of legality and knowing that it was not,” Cantorné “took part in a contracting dynamic through the figure of the minor contract, thereby bypassing the requirements for publicity”.
“And it allowed direct award and made possible an arbitrary choice of the awardee, instead of going to the corresponding procedure, in some cases even without going to any procedure at all,” the Chamber added, emphasizing that “there are indications that point to the elements of a possible crime of administrative prevarication”.
In June, the former MP appeared voluntarily before the Supreme Court to testify and maintained the “legitimacy” of all the contracts approved during his term at the helm of the Tarragona council, rejecting having committed any illegality.
Shortly before the electoral advance, the Plenary of the Congress of Deputies authorized the high court to investigate the then parliamentarian by approving unanimously the request for a waiver of immunity submitted by the Supreme Court.