Rob Horgan
A FORMER mayor has become the third in the Axarquia to be jailed for property fraud.
Ex-Competa leader Leovigildo Lopez, 72, will join the former mayors of Alcaucin and Vinuela after being handed two years in prison, for approving the licence for an unlicensed warehouse on protected land
The judge described Lopez, mayor of Competa for 16 years, as a ‘repeat offender’ having been regularly fined and given suspended sentences for breaching property regulations throughout his political career.
He joins ex-mayor of Vinuela Juan Millan and Jose Alba, ex leader of Alcaucín, in Alhaurin prison.
Expat-run campaign group SOHA (Save our homes Axarquia) described the sentence as a ‘further step in the right direction’ towards clearing up the region’s appalling property mess.
“This latest sentencing demonstrates a change in attitude to breaches of property law,” a SOHA spokesman told the Olive Press.
“It should serve as a warning to all other ex-mayors that no matter how old their crimes are, they can still be held accountable.”
Is it really worth bothering to report the unending corruption in Spain. If they started garotting them it may have an effect but even then I’m not sure.
So another mayor has gone to prison, so what? It doesn’t solve the long term problem of so called illegal properties in Andalucia does it. I am a member of SOHA but I don’t agree with them on this issue, it is the thin end of a very big wedge and the people who are affected by this are still a long way from having their properties regularised.
Instead of sitting around blaming everyone else for what has happened, why don’t the Junta de Andalucia try to wipe the slate clean and come up with some meaningful solutions. They knew exactly what the mayors were doing for all those years and did nothing about it while all the money was rolling in. Instead of getting bogged down with inertia, now is the time to regularise the affected properties and then create some new, workable laws and make sure they are properly enforced to thereafter.
The alternative is even more dead old towns with a decreasing population, zero inward investment, zero employment opportunities, and an even bigger glut of unsold properties. Hardly good for the future or the economy is it?