A FORMER mayor of Orihuela, Monica Lorente, has been given a four-month jail term and disqualified from holding public office for 20 months over the illegal award of a refuse contract in 2007.

Lorente was the municipality’s mayor between 2007 and 2011.

She will not go to prison because it was a first offence with a sentence of below the two-year threshold.

ANGEL FENOLL

Along with nine others including three ex-councillors, a total of nearly €600,000 will have to repaid to Orihuela council.

All of the politicians were members of the Partido Popular.

The Alicante Provincial Court reduced the punishments handed down due to the delay in the issue being resolved.

24 other defendants in the so-called Brugal case including former Orihuela mayor Jose Manuel Medina and other former councillors, have been acquitted of all charges.

Orihuela’s refuse contract was deemed to have been ‘rigged’ in favour of an award to businessman Angel Fenoll- owner of Colsur SL and Proambiente SL.

Fenoll was given sentences totalling three years and nine months in prison for three bribery offences.

Prosecutors accused those in the dock of fraud, abuse of power, bribery, influence peddling and illicit association, seeking sentences of up to 38 years in prison.

All of the verdicts and punishments can be appealed before the Valencian Supreme Court.

Monica Lorente and Angel Fenoll are also implicated in other parts of the Brugal probe which includes an investigation over a Vega Baja region waste treatment plant.

That matter is currently being handled by the Supreme Court.
Click here to read more Costa Blanca News from The Olive Press.