Prosecutor Sees Evidence of Forgery in La Murada and Orihuela Costa Festival accounts
The alleged falsification of invoices used to justify municipal pageant subsidies within the Orihuela districts of La Murada and Orihuela Costa continues to advance by means of the courts.
Following a prison investigation, the Public Prosecutor’s Office has concluded that there are indications of doc forgery involving the presidents of each pageant committees.
The prosecution has determined to course of every case independently, because it sees no connection between the 2 units of alleged prison acts. Both issues have now been forwarded to the Court of First Instance in Orihuela.
Part of the proof stems from a criticism filed by Héctor Mateo Sigüenza, secretary of the La Murada committee and Vox adviser, who reported the falsification of his signature on a doc used within the subsidy justification. His accusation coincided with the City Council’s personal investigation into suspected irregularities within the dealing with of public funds granted for 2024 pageant actions.
The political context provides weight to the case. La Murada is one in all Vox’s strongest electoral bases in Orihuela, and the now-questioned committee president, Berná, had served as an adviser to Mayor Pepe Vegara (PP) till stepping down because of the affair. The council is demanding the return of €19,280 from the La Murada committee and €7,352 from the lately fashioned Orihuela Costa committee.
The City Council submitted to the Prosecutor’s Office an in depth technical report masking 117 recordsdata and outlining alleged bill manipulations totalling €26,632. These funds had been superior on the finish of 2023 as municipal subsidies meant to assist pageant programmes.
Municipal accountants flagged quite a few discrepancies, together with invoices that didn’t correspond to precise funds or companies obtained, suppliers who refused to reply to verification requests, and repeated failures by each committees to make clear evident inconsistencies.
In La Murada, a hanging instance was an €8,900 bill for hiring the native musical group Juventud Musical, which in actuality obtained solely €2,000. Another set of invoices—totalling greater than €13,700 for pageant programmes—was finally confirmed by the Tax Agency to have been largely fabricated, with just one bill for €1,742 deemed professional.
In Orihuela Costa, the committee submitted financial institution switch receipts whose altered figures had been visually evident attributable to mismatched font sizes. Even after resubmission, the receipts remained inconsistent with real financial institution codecs, and the financial institution later confirmed that no such transactions existed.
After the investigation grew to become public, Berná issued a press release defending the committee’s actions, accusing the City Council of procedural irregularities, violating the presumption of innocence, and selling what he described as a politically pushed narrative.
