Friday, March 29

The councilor who denounced corruption in the Consell Esportiu de L’Hospitalet breaks the PSC card


The councilor who denounced the irregularities in the management of the Consell Esportiu de L’Hospitalet, Jaume Graells, has left his public office and has torn up his PSC card amid harsh criticism of the party’s leadership, which he has accused of acting with “ secrecy”, “passivity” and having condemned him to “ostracism” after denouncing the corruption case.

Núria Marín, to the councilor who denounced the diversion of funds from the Consell Esportiu de L’Hospitalet: “You do what you have to do”

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Graells raised the alarm about the case in February 2020, and has always maintained that both the reaction of the mayor, Núria Marín, and the party were insufficient. The investigation initiated by Graells’s complaint has continued its course and, pending the outcome of the main piece, the Prosecutor’s Office has already presented the first indictment, in which it claims 4 and a half years in prison for two former socialist councilors – they had to resign due to the scandal – for defrauding the Consell by falsifying severance pay.

In a letter addressed to the first secretary of the PSC, Salvador Illa, Graells regrets the “sad” and “disappointing” approach to the corruption case that, in his opinion, has been carried out by the PSC. For the councilor, the party should have protected him more as a whistleblower and made decisions regarding the imputed socialist charges instead of “hiding behind” the fact that the case was under investigation and an oral trial had not yet been opened.

“Refining political responsibilities is not judging, it is starting to do things right in a committed and exemplary application of the founding ethical principles of the PSC,” Graells maintains in his letter, in which he laments the “secrecy”, the “passivity”, the “closing ranks” and even the “thundering silence” and the “repression against those who go out of the script and decide to denounce corruption”. “The citizens of L’Hospitalet deserve another response from the PSC. The citizens of L’Hospitalet deserve explanations for everything that has happened”, he adds.

Graells maintains that in his decades of militancy he has maintained “unquestionable loyalty” to the party, but that the PSC has condemned him “to the most unfair of ostracisms” for having denounced corruption in the Consell. “All of this is unfortunate for me. It’s the world upside down”, ditch Graells.

The summary of the case highlights the confrontation that two of the main defendants in the case, former mayors Cristian Alcázar and Cris Plaza, had with Graells after he denounced the diversion of Consell funds for private expenses such as dinners or books. The confrontation reached the assemblies of the PSC in L’Hospitalet. In one of them, revealed by elDiario.es and held electronically during the pandemic, Alcázar called Graells “unpresentable” and demanded that he cut off the microphone.



www.eldiario.es