HE Criminal court no. 3 de Orihuela condemned Benferri mayor jailed for 4 months, socialist Luis Vicente Mateo, to the City Council secretary-supervisor for harassing workers. The mayor also has to pay compensation to the civil servant 42,574 euros for psychological disorders resulting from “persistent” harassment between 2014 and 2018.
sentence, your victim He experienced physical and psychological fatigue with 730 days of incapacity and its sequelae.. The Special Prosecutor’s Office requested two years’ imprisonment, which is the maximum limit set by the Penal Code for this crime, and the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor requested one year in prison.
The final sentence given by the judge was reduced from six months to four, with the exception of the accused, proving undue delays. The lawsuit was filed in February 2017, and the verdict came more than five years later. The mayor’s defense demanded acquittal, disregarding the “criminal” facts. The penalty can be appealed on appeal.
Expenses and allowances
Louis Vincent Matthew He has been mayor of Benferri since 1999 and a councilor since 1994. The year Joaquín Botella García took office as secretary-controller in the Benferrejo City Council. The sentence contains as proven facts a whole exhibition of the abusive attitudes and behaviors of the mayor towards the official, which were also followed by his environment. Councilors of the PSOE government team, officials and even the local police.
The resolution states that the mayor and secretary maintain “an intimate relationship in a personal and working environment.” However, in 2014, the notary public strengthened its management audit function. Economic-financial of the City CouncilHe determined that 50 thousand Euros of pocket money and expense payments in favor of the mayor were collected to the public treasury, “the defendant reacted by initiating an attitude of harassment against him, he was mentally unstable and caused serious disturbances in his relations at work.
fully loaded
Mateo allowed PSOE councilors to confirm at the plenary session that the secretary was collaborating with the opposition “in a way that ultimately discredited him” without the mayor’s intervention. In one session, one of the councilors said, “Let him go, don’t you see them (PPP)”. The councilor also made no promise to him, publicly describing the technician’s interventions, demanding that he “drop these fumes”, “The Guardiola show ». He even retracted the papers he had noted down the session. The secretaries are present at the plenary sessions with the mayor, as notaries of what goes on in the plenary.
payroll
On another occasion, where the secretary instructed an official on how to process files, the mayor “stopped her from leaving the office by scolding her loudly, and when she left, she continued to yell at her in the presence of other officials.” In addition, the mayor has increased the wages and duties previously given to other technicians by the secretary by decree. As a result of this situation, the official was on leave from May to September 2015.
When he returned to the company, the mayor “isolated” him. He imposed that any communication he had with the staff was via email or through the mayor himself, and never directly, as was the usual practice of a civil servant who is the main person in a municipality’s management organizational chart as the secretary-controller. and more in a small management.
Louis Vincent Matthew He also began to entrust the preparation of reports with a very short delivery time to him. For example, he made a claim about himself. Modernize the Plan in 2015 There is only a 24-hour margin left to the plenary session at which it was discussed. And the liquidation of the 2016 budgets is one day before it is considered at the general assembly, as was the case with the budget change before the general assembly in the same year. Even the first mayor convicted of harassment reported via the municipality’s social media channels in February 2016 that the undersecretary-controller was responsible for non-payment of payrolls to City Council staff.
“Isolation, harassment and cornering”
The verdict stated that all of the defendant’s actions “had succeeded in damaging his personal and professional reputation, which he had knowingly adopted had contributed to the isolation, harassment and cornering of the secretary in the performance of his duties.” Due to this situation, the coach was again on leave from April 2016 to March 2018.
In this new re-establishment, Vicente Mateo went further by replacing his offices as secretary and mandating that any instructions or communications he must follow be made “in writing through agents of the Local Police”. This order was followed by a third leave period, from July to October 2018. Between 2014 and 2018, the mayor opened seven disciplinary files against the officer, all archived. He was the mayor’s cousin, a worker in the municipality, who performed the secretarial duties whenever this officer was on leave.
SENTENCE THAT SHOULD RESPECT BUT “NOT SHARE” AND “NOT HARD”
Mayor Luis Vicente Mateo Orihuela 3. This is the Town Hall Secretary”. In this sense he expressedand reaffirmed my confidence in justice “I respect the judgment, but I do not share it, and therefore I have instructed my lawyers to prepare and submit the relevant appeal to prove my innocence and reveal the truth,” he said.
The councilor argues that “his actions on this issue have always been aimed at defending the entire staff of this City Council,” just as, as Mayor, “I have always defended and fought for my people and this land.”
The mayor points out that the mayor’s commitment to his office requires: “A huge personal effort that I had to align with my profession as a teacher”.
“Move the residents of Benferri, I feel very calm as the sentence is not finalized because I am very clear about my innocence and I want this matter to be resolved as soon as possible”, repeated.
ONE OF THE MOST VETERANS IN THE PROVINCE
Benferri is one of the smallest municipalities in Vega Baja with 1,800 residents. Luis Vicente Mateo (1957) ruled with absolute majority for 24 years. He is known for his advocacy of the Tagus transfer, his criticism of CHS’s failure to respond to floods, and his refusal to teach Valencian language in Vega Baja (he is a Primary School teacher), sometimes placing him away from the authorities. PSOE’s positions.