Since early this Wednesday morning, the Spanish National Police, led by its UDEF financial crime unit, has been carrying out an anti-corruption operation against several elected officials, administrators and professionals in the city of Sitges, south-east of Barcelona. Police officers entered several municipal offices and homes and arrested eleven of the thirteen people who are being investigated and charged at Vilanova i la Geltrú court number 8, which initiated the investigation.
The eleven arrested, including the Sitges mayor, Aurora Carbonell, of the Catalan Republican Left (ERC) were transferred to the Verneda police station in Barcelona, where they were questioned in the presence of their lawyers. Among those arrested, apart from the mayor, are other councillors, municipal professionals from Sitges city council and people related to the cooperatives and entities that allegedly received the fraudulent subsidies that the National Police are investigating.
The majority of those arrested have been released on bail pending their summons by the Vilanova i la Geltrú court and late on Wednesday evening mayor Carbonell was also released. Some will spend the night at the police station before being handed over to the judge this Thursday or Friday.
Aurora Carbonell, who was re-elected on May 28th and sworn in as mayor for the new mandate four days ago, led the municipal government in the 2019-2023 period with the support of the Independent Group and Guanyem Sitges (a CUP-Comuns coalition), and it was in this period that the offences being investigated by the court allegedly took place. During the years from 2015 and 2019 the municipal government was in the hands of CiU, with mayor Miquel Forns, who is not known to have been arrested today.
Anti-corruption operation
Although not many details of the police operation that exploded today are known, the National Police accuse those arrested of crimes of abuse of authority, misuse of funds and falsification of documents in the awarding of grants and minor contracts in the two past mandates, between 2019 and 2022. The action of the Sitges city council regarding the Sitges-Garraf Third Sector Board, which groups together social assistance federations, and a cooperative is also being investigated.
Among the spaces searched by police at the Sitges city hall was the Promotion and Territory department and the IT department. National Police officers, some in plainclothes and others in uniform, also entered the main council building at noon, where mayor Carbonell was formally arrested.
ERC confirmed through a statement that, prior to today's police operation, Carbonell had "brought to the attention" of legal teams "the facts that are under investigation, after detecting alleged irregularities". Likewise, the party emphasize that the mayor had already stopped the subsidies to a cooperative which is now under police investigation, and had initiated proceedings to reclaim "unjustified" subsidies. The Republicans express their "full commitment to the transparent management of public resources" and reiterates its fight against corruption, endorsed, they explain, "by an unpolluted trajectory in this regard throughout the 92 years of "history of the organization".