José Martín de Besa, after managing to come out victorious from covid in 2020 and carrying a lymphoma at 76 years old, made it clear in his complaint: “This is a complaint against my daughter Josefina because she has stolen from me and has physically and psychologically abused me during the time I was in her house.” He confirmed and signed it, as stated in the aforementioned document, prepared by an agent of the National Police from the Leganés police station.
He went there in the summer of 2020 accompanied by his son Francisco, who helped him prepare an Excel document with the list of all the bank transactions and transfers that Josefina had made during the time Joaquín was hospitalized at the Valdemoro hospital.
“One day he called me and told me that my sister had stolen from him and that he wanted to report her, I thought he was exaggerating, but he insisted so much that I finally went to check what he said and, indeed, there were some strange movements and of a certain amount in his bank accounts and I told him I offered to take him to the police station, but that he would file the complaint,” Francisco declared this Wednesday before the judge of the Provincial Court of Madrid.
Minutes earlier, his sister Josefina had done so, claiming that it was all a “manipulation by her brother to be declared the sole and universal heir by their father” and that, although with great difficulty, she had tried to justify the bank transactions: “It was money for my father’s treatments,” “to buy him a bed,” “a table,” “to fix his house,” “I took out the money and my father put it in a bag, but I don’t know what he did with it”…
José Martín, who passed away in 2021, had a fall in March 2020, in the middle of the pandemic. He was then 76 years old and on March 27 of that year, his daughter decided to take him from the Madrid neighborhood of Opañel, where he lived, in the Carabanchel district, to her house in Valdemoro “to take care of him.” However, for years, they had no relationship at all. “My father wanted to kill my mother,” he stated this Wednesday before the judge. The marriage broke abruptly and the children and mother continued their lives away from the father.
Only Francisco, according to what he said at the hearing this Wednesday, restored the relationship with his father after the birth of his children. In fact, he acknowledged, it was his father who paid the down payment for the house where he now lives with his family. “My father, because of the care we gave him when he got sick and to compensate for the money he had given my brother before, authorized me to make those transfers and withdrawals from his accounts with the card,” Josefina justified the money movements and visits to the notary to modify the will.
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Up to 58,000 euros
Because, after his father’s admission to the hospital in early April 2020, Josefina began making transactions: 1,900 euros on April 6, 900 euros on April 8, another 900 on April 16, 600 on the 21st; on the 23rd a bank transfer of 47,000 euros was made directly, and on May 23 she withdrew 600 euros from another account; on June 9 she withdrew 3,000 euros and on the 17th another 2,000.
For all this, and despite the fact that his father wrote that he did not want a criminal process against his daughter but preferred the civil route to recover his money, she is accused of a crime of fraud against her own father. The prosecution requests a year and a half in prison and that she returns to her father (now to his heirs) all the money she took, about 58,000 euros in total.
José had been diagnosed with a “severe pulmonary pathology; he was found to have malnutrition, subacute functional deterioration and a hyperactive state, as well as semi-orientation in the three spheres, recognition of self, space, and time. Evidencing probably senile deterioration not diagnosed, but which, along with his cardiopulmonary pathology and malnutrition, would place the patient in a lack of free will and capacity to decide about himself and his interests, needing to be advised and tutored.”
But his three children, appearing in the trial, have stated that their father had his mental faculties in quite good condition despite his physical deterioration. And despite not knowing exactly what he had signed with his daughter Josefina before a notary, in the presence of several neighbors, nor in which notary office.
Before passing away, José made a new will in which he disinherited his daughter Josefina, gave the legitimate portion to his daughter Yolanda, and declared his son Francisco the universal heir. The trial has been adjourned for judgment.
