Former PSOE councillor in Santiago accepts six-month prison sentence for renting company building to municipality
José Manuel Pichel, former socialist councillor of Santiago de Compostela, has agreed to a six-month prison sentence for prohibited negotiations with public officials. The sentence will be suspended if he does not reoffend within two years.
Pichel accepts sentence: six months in prison and four years' disqualification from office
José Manuel Pichel, former socialist councillor of Santiago de Compostela municipality, has accepted a sentence of six months' imprisonment and four years' disqualification from office after admitting his role in the rental of a municipal building owned by a company he himself had managed. According to ABC, the agreement has been signed between the defence, private prosecutors and the Public Prosecutor's Office, with only judicial ratification remaining.
Pichel will avoid serving time in prison: the execution of the sentence will be suspended if he commits no crime over the next two years. In addition to the custodial sentence and disqualification from holding public office, he must pay a fine of approximately 3,650 euros. The crime for which he will be convicted is prohibited negotiations with public officials.
The origins of the Desproi case
Following the municipal elections in 2019, Pichel took on the role of councillor for Rural Affairs and with it responsibility for the parks and gardens service. The offices of that service were located in the former bus station in the Galician capital, but had to be vacated due to the construction of Xunta administrative buildings on those grounds.
In the first days of September 2021, Pichel initiated efforts to find a new location. Municipal technicians produced several reports during the first half of that month and concluded by recommending a building in the Costa Vella industrial estate, owned by the company Desproi Promociones.
On 14 September 2021, at a session of the local government board, Pichel voted in favour of renting that building from Desproi to temporarily house the parks and gardens service and rural affairs service until new facilities planned at the Amio fairground site became available. The contract stipulated a four-month rental, extendable should work at Amio not be completed on time, at a cost of 4,120 euros plus 865 euros in VAT.
Pichel's link to Desproi
The crux of the case lies in the fact that Pichel had been a manager of Desproi, a company incorporated before 2012. He exercised this management role through the entity Servicios Técnicos Gaia, of which he was owner and manager. On 27 September 2021, at a time coinciding with approval of the rental, Pichel transferred his shares in Gaia to the company Surco Agrario. The building rental contract was signed on 1 October 2021 between the then mayor, Xosé Antonio Sánchez Bugallo, and the new manager of the company.
Upon submitting his resignation in 2023, Pichel acknowledged having made a "considerable error" by "having failed to inform the mayor or the rest of the government board" of his participation in Desproi, although he maintained he had done so "without bad faith".
A case closed for all other defendants
Within the framework of the Desproi case, several councillors from Bugallo's team, including the mayor himself, came to be investigated. However, the case was dismissed for all of them and continued only against Pichel, who was forced to resign as Rural Affairs councillor in 2023 as a result of the controversy.
The proceedings will now conclude with a plea agreement sentence on the terms agreed between the parties. The Public Prosecutor's Office has set out the facts in a document submitted to the court, in which all parties have expressed their support for the suspension of the prison sentence, conditional on Pichel committing no crime over a period of two years.
Source: ABC