A court has condemned Pedro Muñoz Lorite for violating fundamental rights in the dismissal of a Muslim lawyer who worked for his office, the same law firm that has just renewed the million-dollar concession of the Legal Guidance Service of the Madrid City Council
Almeida once again extends the Franco concession to the company that pays 383 euros per month for two municipal buildings
Lawyer Pedro Muñoz Lorite, far-right activist, has been convicted of violating the fundamental rights of an employee of his office whom he fired amid racist insults and other denigrating comments towards the Muslim religion. The Muñoz Lorite office enjoys the concession of the Legal Guidance Service (SOJ) of the Madrid City Council, intended to provide advice to disadvantaged groups whose members do not have the possibility of hiring the services of a lawyer.
Last April, a Social Court convicted Muñoz Lorite for the comments he made to his employee Rabea MM, of Moroccan origin, born in Ceuta and with Spanish nationality. Some of the messages were written by the lawyer in the chat room of the office he directs and in which fifty workers participate. The Law and Business firm has just renewed the SOJ concession for an “estimated value” of 1,367,398.00 euros from public coffers, according to the report from the General Directorate of Social Services.
The ruling of the Social Court number 15 of Madrid declared Rabea’s dismissal null and void “due to violation of the fundamental right to Equality and Effective Judicial Protection in its Indemnity aspect” and ordered Law and Business Enterprises Worldwide (LaBE) to compensate the moral damages caused with 20,000 euros. On July 12, the sentence became final when the judge confirmed in an order that none of the parties had filed an appeal within the established period.
In one of the messages, dated June 7, 2023, Pedro Muñoz Lorite addressed Rabea, through chat, to explain that he does not contact her by phone because he had to go out to Tel Aviv to enjoy a pop festival “ of all sexual tendencies that exist and will exist, in order to have the shelter and freedom of the only democracy that exists in the Middle East, surrounded by the religion invented by Satan, called Islam.”
“I don’t care if you work with me or for some ayatollah on Paseo de La Castellana, as long as you do your job when you get home, you can pray to Satan or Buddha, honestly, I don’t give a damn about “Whoever respects (sic) obeisance in an internal forum, I only consider it a small mental illness that will end on the day of your death (…)”, he continues.
The plaintiff is a lawyer and had worked in the Legal Guidance Service of the Madrid City Council, on behalf of LAbE, serving the migrant population. In May 2023, she was assigned to the Velilla Gender Violence Guidance Point in San Antonio and last summer, the company sent Rabea to provide service in Valdemoro, another town in the Community of Madrid where, as in Velilla, the office has the award for legal guidance. When Rabea expressed her disagreement with the transfer, the company fired her.
As stated in the ruling from last April, Pedro Muñoz Lorite wrote an email to Rabea on August 23 with the following content: “It is the same to be a shitty Moor, a bastard, a dog, a thief, a thief who wants to collect even though their fucking professional responsibility is the same in my company as it is to save my company’s ass with a specific city council (…)”.
In the past, Muñoz Lorite represented Clean Hands in several lawsuits against left-wing politicians, such as Manuel Carmena, Pablo Iglesias, Iñigo Errejón and Juan Carlos Monedero, and has a YouTube channel where he uploads ideological content, such as a fictitious interview with the dictator. deceased Francisco Franco.
The office: “They are manipulated messages”
Authorized sources from the LaBE office assure that there is an appeal before the Superior Court of Justice of Madrid against the final ruling of the Social Court number 15 of the capital, but that this route is paralyzed waiting for the conclusion of another that has been opened by criminal means and which is under summary secrecy.
According to the spokesperson for Muñoz Lorite’s office, the messages included in the lawsuit against Rabea’s dismissal have been “stolen” and “manipulated” and a court has already accepted a complaint for these facts.
In 2019, the Law and Business Enterprises Worldwide SL (LaBE) firm obtained the first external concession from the Legal Guidance Service. The decision to create the SOJ and replace the task that the public defenders had been carrying out was adopted by the municipal government of Manuela Carmena two days before the 2019 elections, the elections that preceded a political change in the Madrid City Council. With José Luis Almeida already as mayor, the award of the SOJ was granted to Lorite’s office.
The Legal Guidance Service of the Madrid City Council is a free service that provides advice to people without resources or in a vulnerable situation. Before, public defenders carried out this work. After its outsourcing, LaBE and Accem, a non-profit entity with experience with people at risk of social exclusion, competed for the concession.
As published at the time chain BeingAccem obtained the highest score in two of the three sections, related to staff training, work methodology and knowledge of social services. The lower economic offer from Muñoz Lorite’s office made the offer tilt in his favor. Sources from the legal profession assure that Muñoz Lorite can bid lower due to the low salaries he pays his SOJ lawyers, young lawyers with little or no experience.
It so happens that this summer, with the new process to tender the SOJ again, it was a company other than Muñoz Lorite that presented a cheaper offer. However, the City Council’s Contracting Board has proceeded to exclude it from the competition due to “abnormally low offer.”
In this sense, the City Council has resorted to jurisprudence of the National Court after the first concession to Lorite to expel Novit Legal from the process, according to the document signed by the head of the Department of Coordination and Programming of Primary Social Care of the Consistory, María del Pilar Benito Pecharromán. Sources from the City Council explain that the award to LaBE has already occurred but that it is still “being formalized” and that it will come into force in December 2024.
The worker who sued Muñoz Lorite is, according to sources close to the company, only one of a large group of professionals who would have been denigrated by the owner of the office. The 15-M Legal Assembly is compiling other cases to take new legal actions against Muñoz Lorite. He will also file a criminal complaint attributing to the lawyer a hate crime for the messages sent to Rabea.
“My friend Adolfo”
“In old Europe we continue to drink ham wine, but we have our souls (sic) loaded under our pillows, to face, until death, those intolerant and enemies of personal freedom, encouraged by a prophet who does not exist for a god who does not exist and for a religion that tries to condemn and slander people with your sexual condition, origin, nature or ancestry, my friend Adolfo was wrong in establishing an objective in culture and society (…), says the text of another of the messages posted in the chat, and addressed to the Muslim worker, by the head of the office that advises disadvantaged groups and that collects from the public coffers of the Madrid City Council.
LaBE is also awarded contracts for legal guidance to citizens in five other town councils in the Community of Madrid, four governed by the PP and one with a socialist mayor. The highest amount of these other towns in the community is that of Valdemoro, 138,000 euros, although the rest do not exceed 33,000. He also provides legal advice for the State Health and Childhood Foundation, dependent on the Ministry of Health, for which he charges 70,000 euros. All of these contracts are far from the one the Madrid City Council has for 1.3 million euros.
Asked about the new concession to LaBE, a spokesperson for the Madrid City Council affirms that the Public Sector Contracts Law establishes the prohibition cases for contracting with public administrations and that the documentation presented by Muñoz Lorite’s office “contains the statements negative regarding these reasons for exclusion.”
The City Council led by José Luis Martínez Almeida attributes the renewal to the ultra lawyer’s office because it has been evaluated by “technical staff based on objective and subjective criteria.” “Regarding the subjective part, it refers to aspects included in the project presented and, in no case, to other circumstances unrelated to that proposal,” adds the municipal spokesperson in reference to the conviction of the successful bidder Muñoz Lorite.
Add Comment