Ex-Councillor from Pilar de la Horadada Found Guilty of Bribery

A leading ex-councillor in Pilar de la Horadada has been given a two-year jail sentence, after the Provincial Court in Elche found him guilty of bribery after he tried to force a businessman to give him a car worth up to 30 thousand euro in exchange for a municipal contract.

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Pilar’s former Partido Popular health and fiestas councillor, Francisco Javier Lara, was accused of misusing his position in the way that he behaved with the businessman in 2012, who refused to bow down to his demands, and secretly recorded some of his conversations, which were used in the trial. Javier Lara was though acquitted by the jury on a coercion charge.

As it is a first offence, the ex-councillor will not be jailed under Spanish law, but has been fined the sum of 10 euro a day for a year, which works out at over three and a half thousand euro. He now lives and works in the UK as a plumber in the Manchester area.