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The Investigating Court number 3 of Marbella has admitted a complaint against the mayoress of the town, Ángeles Muñoz, for the alleged crimes of administrative prevarication and against the environment. The complaint describes the irregularities committed in the concession and operation of the Opium club, an open-air nightclub known for hosting the shooting that occurred at dawn on July 18 while Felipe Juan Froilán de Marichalar y Borbón celebrated his birthday inside the premises.
Together with Muñoz, his deputy in the Consistory, Félix Romero, as well as the company Adventure Beach SL, owner of Opium, are accused, according to the order for admission to proceedings signed by Judge Gonzalo Dívar, to which elDiario.es has had access and which is dated March 2. The judge has already called Javier Bordas de Togores and Enrique Cueto Torres, from the company that owns the establishment, to declare as defendants, who must appear in court on April 12.
The complaint, filed by a neighbor affected by the activity of the premises, explains how in 2014 the premises received a municipal license to open as a “restaurant” on the national highway 340, in the municipality of Marbella. The permitted capacity, according to decree 5881/2017, is eight people. However, and according to the complainant, the owners of the business “have turned the premises into a pub/disco in which they have installed outdoor hammocks, a DJ booth, a swimming pool… and in which they carry out live music activity from large format without the corresponding authorization to do so, with the permission of the City Council and without any kind of control by the local authorities”.
The night of the shooting the club was abuzz with calls for a performance by a South African DJ named Black Coffee. The photos of the venue published on the occasion of the incident show that the restaurant for eight people is, in reality, an open-air macro-disco with a large stage thanks to the fact that it received a second auditorium license whose ends, according to the neighbors, are not fulfilled either. “The local authorities -continues the complainant- not only allow but encourage with their permissiveness the illegal situations in which they act” the owners of the establishment.
The name of Opium has appeared mixed with that of Ángeles Muñoz on the occasion of the investigation for drug trafficking and money laundering that has affected two members of his family. The logos of various companies linked to the laundering of marijuana money appear sponsoring the car with which one of the sons of the marriage between Muñoz and Broberg, Christian, competed. As this snapshot reveals, the car was also sponsored by Opium, the nightclub whose “illegalities” have allegedly been sponsored by the City Council directed by Muñoz.
Muñoz’s husband, Lars Broberg, and his son, Joakim, were prosecuted in the case that is being followed in the National Court. Lars Broberg died on March 4 at the age of 80 when the process had already stopped being directed against him due to his deteriorated state of health. He was accused of integration into a criminal organization and money laundering from drug trafficking. The same crimes for which Joakim Broberg still has to answer, along with large-scale drug trafficking.
The complaint against Opium and Ángeles Muñoz was filed in October 2021, but until now it had not merited a judicial resolution with the opening of the preliminary proceedings, which bear the number 2282/2021. In the neighbor’s complaint it is said that the owners of Opium “have not respected at any time the opening license they had been granted, nor the closing hours, remaining open until the wee hours of the morning.” On July 18, five people had to be hospitalized, including an individual who was stabbed and who, in response, began shooting with a firearm he was carrying, hitting four customers. After the closure of the 2022 season, with the premises already in temporary disuse, the City Council proceeded to withdraw the restaurant’s current license and has begun to process another for the new season, sources close to the case specify.
The mayoress of Marbella, Ángeles Muñoz, may not be investigated by the Marbella Court despite the admission of the complaint. Muñoz has been registered for 24 years, either because of her previous designation as an autonomous parliamentarian, in the Congress of Deputies, or the one she now enjoys before the Supreme Court, as a senator for the Popular Party. In the event that the proceedings carried out by Judge Dívar lead to evidence against Muñoz, the investigating magistrate must present a reasoned statement before the High Court and refrain in his favor from a possible investigation against the senator.
The paths of Dívar and Muñoz have already crossed before in court. Gonzalo Dívar, nephew of the former president of the Judiciary and the Supreme Court, twice filed a complaint filed by a neighborhood association against Muñoz in the so-called Lindes case. Only the insistence of the Prosecutor’s Office managed to get the case to the Supreme Court, before which the senator was already registered, and that filed the case against her. The case focused on the voluntary transfer of land by the Marbella City Council to the neighboring municipality of Benahavís, of which 120,000 developable meters belonged to her husband and Muñoz’s brother-in-law.
Five million billing
The complainant neighbor explains that the continuous calls to the Marbella Municipal Police for breaches of municipal regulations on noise emissions have no effect. The agents, says the letter, “are limited to receiving the calls, going to the conflict zone, taking notes and transferring them to the City Council.” The Consistory, he continues, “has opened some disciplinary file” but its result is unknown because the Consistory does not provide a copy. “In any case, no effective action has been taken against the establishment,” he adds.
The summary for drug trafficking of the National Court includes another reference to Opium. In one of the wiretapped calls to Joakim Broberg, Muñoz’s stepson, he speaks to a number linked to the architect firm of Fernando Gómez Huete. Joakim’s interlocutor offers him the 5% that he claims to own in the discotheque for 250,000 euros. Broberg asks him if he would do business with it and his interlocutor tells him that Opium had a turnover of five million euros the previous summer, that of 2019. “What happens is that a lot has been spent on dj’s because they are promoting it,” he adds he. There is no trace in the summary of how the negotiations ended.
The plaintiff against Muñoz and the Opium company stops in the summer following that, after the confinement, when the premises were able to open with restrictions. Opium, he says, was allowed “not only to fail to comply, but also to carry out nightlife activities when it is not authorized to do so.” To circumvent the limitations of the restaurant license, Opium requested another for “prerecorded music in the open air” and this was granted “irregularly,” the complaint adds. In it, article 15 of Royal Decree 155/2018 is cited, which establishes the prohibition of installing music equipment, live performances “in leisure and recreation establishments” when these are “intended exclusively for the consumption of food and drinks”.
The background of the premises: an accused and deceased councilor
The complainant also recalls that the Opium nightclub has another procedure open in the Investigating Court number 1 of Marbella corresponding to the activity it carried out when it was called Funky Buddah Beach. In that case, Pablo Moro, Councilor for Works of the Marbella City Council and very close to Muñoz, was charged. Moro left politics as a result of his imputation. The former councilor died in a motorcycle accident in 2016, with the cause still open.
The granting of said license to put pre-recorded music on Opium “is responsible for the Marbella City Council, and the technicians and the rest of the personnel who participated in said file and established the favorable resolution in this regard”, the complaint states. Said allegedly irregular license was signed on May 24, 2021 by the deputy mayor, Félix Romero, and a copy of it is attached to the complaint.
In addition, the regulations say that said authorizations must be limited to the hours between 3:00 p.m. and 12:00 a.m., when Opium has been opening at 12:00 a.m. and extending its activity into the early hours of the morning. The authorization is limited to four months and must be renewed. On the date of the complaint, Opium had been enjoying it for five months, explains the complainant. The authorization also describes an authorization for an adjoining terrace when what Opium has set up is a swimming pool, hammocks and a stage.
The irregularity of the license granted and the non-compliance with the regulations for this type of establishment adds to the fact that Opium’s activity also “attacks the environment and causes damage to the neighbors”. “It generates an unbearable noise in the environment,” denounces the neighbor.
“The City Council is well aware of the problem, frequently verified by the local Police, recognizes its obligation to solve it by opening disciplinary proceedings, but it does not act, it does not do anything effective. Minimum sanctions are imposed that the owner of the premises pays without major problems and the illegal activity continues, as it is economically profitable for him”, adds the plaintiff against Muñoz. The mayoress resumed her public activity last Friday with an act of the local PP in which the deputy secretary of Organization of the party at the national level, Elías Bendodo, participated.
Thank you very much for all your love, I join the activity taking stock of the legislature with all my colleagues at the Management Guarantee Convention. pic.twitter.com/d99rUB8ClN
— Angeles Muñoz (@AngelesMunoz_) March 10, 2023
The complainant requests in the complaint that the restaurant license be revoked, which has already occurred, and that the local musical installation be removed, that the City Council be required to obtain licenses and authorizations, disciplinary proceedings, those derived from neighborhood complaints , the requirements to the owners of the business and that the Municipal Police provide the multiple telephone and written complaints, as well as that a statement be taken from an industrial technical engineer, two municipal police officers who are identified by their professional number, the head of the notices from the Marbella Town Hall, a neighbor and the local fire chief.
[Una primera versión de esta información se ha completado con que la licencia de restaurante fue retirada por el Ayuntamiento después de los hechos ocurridos en julio, tras el cierre de temporada , que tuvo lugar en septiembre y ya con el establecimiento fuera de uso]
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