The PSOE of Pozoblanco, a Cordoban town of 17,250 inhabitants, has taken a step forward and reported this Thursday morning to the Prosecutor's Office the case of the son of the secretary of the mayor of the Cordoban town who received a salary for a municipal job that never performed. These alleged irregular charges were reported by the then Councilor for Personnel, Gerardo Arévalo, who was dismissed from his position at the beginning of March and who this Wednesday sent a letter to his neighbors recounting the case, defending his actions and targeting the councilor. , the popular Santiago Cabello, as the last person responsible for what happened.
“We have filed a complaint with the Córdoba Prosecutor's Office to clarify these circumstances. We have taken this step out of political responsibility because we understand that the facts carry a responsibility that may constitute a crime,” said the spokesperson for the socialist municipal group, Rafael Villarreal. The councilor has recalled how on many occasions, when the mayor has been asked about this case in plenary sessions, he has always told them to “go to court.” “We have picked up the gauntlet,” he said.
The young man had applied for a position in the Pozoblanco City Council as a social integrator within the plan Young Now, financed by the Junta de Andalucía with European funds. Although he was the best positioned for the job, the then Councilor for Personnel reported that, if he was hired, he would exceed the limit established in the Workers' Statute on concatenation of contracts and chose the second candidate. However, the boy was given the same contract for which he was paid between December 23, 2022 and June 22, 2023 at least 6,733 euros, although he never set foot in his workplace at the municipal center of the city. women.
Villarreal has also questioned the validity of the investigation commission that has been launched in the City Council to clarify the facts because it was directed by the mayor himself, who managed to avoid the challenge raised by the opposition due to the absolute majority that the PP has in the full. “He still has not given any explanation as to why he allowed a person to get paid without coming to work. He is incapable of answering that question,” the socialist councilor reproached.
“The only thing he did was say that he wanted this person to be hired, but he did not say at all that these payrolls should stop being paid,” added Villarreal, who, despite everything, has reported that his party will continue in the party. investigation commission.
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The announcement of the presentation of the complaint to the Prosecutor's Office has coincided with the massive sending to the citizens of Pozoblanco of a letter that Arévalo himself sent them and in which he makes a chronology of the events that have occurred since he became interested in the charges. irregularities of the son of the mayor's secretary.
“He has blamed me for events for which only he is responsible,” he writes to the Pozalbences and, like the PSOE councilor, he warns them that Cabello still “has not clarified why he gave the order to hire to his secretary's son and, later, he did not sign the contracts and why has he not demanded that he return the money collected from the City Council? “He allowed the collection during all this time, in fact he signed all the payrolls and ordered the payments to the son of his secretary,” he says.
Arévalo remembers how on many occasions he told the mayor that he should ask the young man to return the money “but he made promises that he didn't keep and presented false excuses.” Regarding the fact that he heads the investigation commission, he is also forceful, like the PSOE. “That he chairs a commission to investigate his own irregularity is a more than evident example of his cynicism. If he investigates himself for what he just did a few months before, it will be difficult to reach a correct result. It is a rude way of evading his own responsibilities” he maintains and ditches: “He tries to change reality without scruples for his own benefit, no matter who falls.”
Throughout this time – the case was uncovered by the press in January of this year – the mayor first denied having knowledge and then always defended the legality of the contract of his secretary's son and his suitability to perform the position.
The PSOE lawsuit is not the only incursion into the courts in this case. The young man himself sued the City Council at the end of January for “violation of his fundamental rights and public freedoms,” as reported by the local digital newspaper. Nowadays. The son of the municipal employee points out that having been paid without working created a “situation of anxiety and desperation” for not having been able to access that position “or be able to exercise a different one during those months” and demands from the council the right to occupation. effective, to the corresponding moral damages and to the unfairness of the dismissal, for which it requests a total of 9,505.94 euros from the City Council.