Walter Finch
A JUDGE has dismissed a complaint of sexual harassment by a local policeman against the high-flying mayor of Estepona.
The complainant had alleged that the mayor, Jose Garcia Urbano, coerced him into sexual relations over the court of 18 months with a mixture of threats and bribes.
A second charge against Urbano of misusing public funds for placing the policeman’s wife, known as CPB, in a town hall role that she never actually performed will go to court next month, however.
The policeman’s lawyer, Antonio Granados, is set to appeal the dismissal after submitting ‘victim statements, 400 pages of supporting documentation and graphic evidence of the forced sexual encounters.’
“I am still in the process of filing the appeal,” Granados told the Olive Press.
“But I want to stress above all that all the evidence supports what was reported and the person under investigation has not presented evidence to deny it.
“What’s more, his intimate relationship with the female witness has been recognised, which is why we requested the prohibition of violence against women, but the court rejected this also.
“We respect the decision of the investigating judge but do not share it,” he added to El Diario.
The allegations that Urbano had been coercing a policeman into sexual encounters spawned a second case when the policeman’s wife, who was initially a witness, reported that she had been granted a temporary contract as a maintenance controller in Estepona.
Estepona councillor Blas Ruzafa, who oversaw CPB’s role, is expected to testify as a witness in the investigation on February 20.
Ruzafa has submitted a report to the court in which he claimed CPB’s duties were to ‘gather information on the state of street cleaning, lighting, garden decoration and street furniture.’
However, CPB testified that she never set foot a day in the Estepona town hall but was paid around €5,200 for 48 days of work.
Urbano, who has denied the claims and called them politically-motivated smears, has been called twice to testify to the court as a suspect in the parallel cases.
In a statement to his Facebook page today, Urbano wrote: “The court confirms that I have been the victim of a false complaint for sexual harassment.
“In this sense, there are no indications of criminality for the opening of oral proceedings, which has revealed the falsehood and contradictions of the complainants’ story, as well as the absolute lack of foundation of the complaint.
“Since I learned of the complaint through the media, I explained that it was an inadmissible and unfair campaign to damage my personal dignity and my political career with a single and clear spurious purpose: to try to remove me from the town hall and from my commitment to Estepona.”
