A blow for Orihuela mayor, Emilio Bascuñana, just 7 weeks into his new term of office, as the Ministry of Health has now passed file evidence to the Provincial Prosecutor’s Office of Alicante who will investigate whether he should be formally charged for taking more than 50,000 gross euros a year from the Department of Health, without carrying out any work as an advisor, from 2007 to 2013.
Bascuñana, a family doctor, has always denied that he charged without working, arguing that he carried out counselling tasks and that he even went to a Vega Baja health centre to cover other doctors’ leave.
But now, this murky affair has finally ended up in the Office of the Prosecutor, since the Ministry itself cannot adopt any type of administrative sanction of its former employee because more than six years since any crime was committed, although up to three commissioned reports conclude and agree that he did charge the public administration without carrying out any work.
Alicante Council leader, Ana Barceló, has previously said that “this man did not work in any health centre but was receiving his salary from the Department of Health, so now it will be up to other agencies to look as the case and decide whether the facts constitute the embezzlement of public funds.”
