Suspicions of misconduct and misuse of public funds in the awarding of Melilla’s Parque Murias shopping centre have surfaced during a separate investigation into alleged vote-buying in the city’s May 2023 regional and municipal elections. The judicial inquiry, known as the caso Santiago-Rusadir, is led by magistrate Carmen María Perles and initially focused on Coalición por Melilla. A police search linked to the vote-buying investigation uncovered documents that investigators say point to possible irregularities in the commercial project, developed under the Partido Popular (PP) government led by Juan José Imbroda.
The wider postal-vote investigation began after an unusually sharp rise in requests to vote by post. Contemporary reports put the potential scale of the suspected fraud at as many as 10,000 votes, about 20% of the electorate, with the potential to affect roughly one-third of the seats in the Assembly. Those figures described the possible reach of the alleged scheme, not a finding that those votes were fraudulently cast. On 26 May 2023, Spain’s Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office took over the investigation linked to Coalición por Melilla.
The document cited in the Parque Murias investigation was found during a search of businessman Abdelmayid Belkasen Mohamed’s home. It referred to construction on the site of the former Valenzuela barracks, completed in 2017 during Imbroda’s fifth term. The National Police’s Economic and Fiscal Crime Unit (UDEF) brought the document to the court’s attention, citing possible offences including administrative prevarication and embezzlement involving members of the PP government between 2015 and 2019, as well as a later Coalición por Melilla official.
After receiving the UDEF report, Perles formally opened proceedings on 7 May 2026, bringing the new material into the broader inquiry. The court order says a confidential source had provided information about alleged fraud in the construction of Parque Murias, which the source called Operación Valenzuela. The court is considering whether to handle the matter as a separate case. The report also includes a handwritten note found during the search. Investigators regard it as impressive and assessed its contents alongside the source’s account as grounds to examine possible wrongdoing in the project’s awarding process.
Imbroda has rejected the allegations and defended the integrity of his administration. He has called them politically motivated attempts to remove the PP after six terms in office. Imbroda maintained that the Parque Murias award followed proper administrative procedures and called his government the most honest in Melilla’s history. PSOE local leader Sabrina Moh has called for explanations, arguing that land intended for public benefit ended up in private hands.
The postal-vote inquiry and the allegations concerning Parque Murias are linked in reporting through material uncovered during police work, but they concern distinct alleged conduct. The vote-buying investigation focused on whether a political party structure, specifically Coalición por Melilla, was used to organise a scheme to gain or retain power through postal-vote manipulation. Police and judicial proceedings included arrests of councillors and deputy councillors from the previous tripartite government, information from statements reported at the time. Those events provide political context for the inquiry; on their own, they do not establish wrongdoing in the commercial project.
Melilla has a impressive judicial precedent involving postal votes: in 2021, the Supreme Court convicted former city president Mustafa Aberchán and former local PSOE secretary-general Dionisio Muñoz over vote-buying related to the 2008 Senate election. That earlier case has heightened political and public attention to the 2023 allegations. From 2019 to 2023, the city was governed by a coalition of Ciudadanos, PSOE and Coalición por Melilla. After the contested 2023 elections, the PP returned to power with an absolute majority.
Melilla is an autonomous Spanish city on the North African coast. Inaugurated in 2017, Parque Murias was described as the city’s first major commercial centre. The investigation has brought scrutiny to the management of public assets and decisions surrounding a major development, while the allegations remain before the courts.
