Agents of the Central Operative Unit of the Civil Guard, of the Seprona, of the National Police and of the Local Police of Yaiza declared as witnesses in the second day of the trial of the Stratvs case, to which only four of the ten accused attended: the businessman Juan Francisco Rosa, the technicians of Classified Activities of Yaiza and the Cabildo, Andrés Morales and Manuel Jesús Spínola, and the former councilor of Yaiza Leonardo Rodríguez, who due to his status as a lawyer has been allowed to sit next to the lawyers and not on the bench, having assumed his defense. As for Rosa and the two technicians, they decided to attend the hearing this Wednesday, despite the fact that the magistrate indicated on the first day that they could not attend the days scheduled for the declaration of experts and witnesses.
"In the proceedings carried out within the Unión case, it is stated that someone was called boss on the island, who was it?", asked the lawyer of the popular accusation, Irma Ferrer, to an agent of the UCO who testified as a witness. "Sometimes Juan Francisco Rosa and sometimes Dimas Martín", replied the agent, who intervened in the Unión case and had access to the telephone conversations intercepted during the investigation of that case, some of which have been incorporated into the Stratvs case. "And who was Dimas on the payroll of"?, insisted the lawyer. "He was registered, at least for formal purposes, as an employee of Rosa", specified the agent, thus pointing out that the other person they called "boss" was a supposed employee of the businessman.
In his statement, the civil guard also explained that in the Unión case, Juan Francisco Rosa was also investigated for a crime of influence peddling, which is the same one that has led him to the dock in this first trial of the Stratvs case. And in that case, the name of the councilor Leonardo Rodríguez was also repeated, who according to the agent "was investigated for influence peddling in relation to Juan Francisco Rosa and Luis Lleó".
During the agent's statement, the prosecutor Ignacio Stampa recalled some of the conversations intercepted by the UCO. And in one of them, a third party spoke of this councilor, stating that he was meeting with Rosa "putting the colors to the Plan". In this regard, the agent pointed out that the Yaiza General Plan was being processed at that time. And he also explained that, "from the beginning" of the Unión case, the object of that investigation focused on "Costa Roja, Luis Lleó and Juan Francisco Rosa", since both businessmen shared interests in Playa Blanca and in particular on that plot, which was the one that unleashed the cause when the then councilor Carlos Espino denounced that he had been offered a bribe in exchange for unblocking the urbanization of Costa Roja.
"I don't think it's debatable that Rosa has influence in all institutions"
"Juan Francisco Rosa has a lot of influence in all public institutions. I don't think that's debatable", declared one of the plaintiffs in the Stratvs case, Javier Díaz Reixa, who also testified this Wednesday as a witness and described that capacity of influence of the businessman as "public and notorious". Díaz Reixa, who chairs the Urban Transparency association, which is a party to the case as a popular accusation, recalled all of Rosa's illegal works, from the Fariones hotel to the Marina Rubicón marina, passing through the Princesa Yaiza and Son Bou hotels, and ending with the Stratvs winery. Thus, he stressed that the situation of Rosa's businesses is also "public and notorious", stressing that "almost all the actions that I know of" have been declared illegal.
When speaking of Rosa's capacity for influence, Díaz Reixa referred to the first knowledge he had of him, as a result of a letter that the businessman sent to Jerónimo Saavedra, so that he would "take an interest" in the sentence that declared the Fariones apart-hotel illegal. As for the Stratvs winery, he explained that they decided to file a complaint at the National Police Station in 2009, a few months after seeing an article in the press in which "some winemakers from La Geria said that there had been preferential treatment". There, according to he explained, they began to "investigate" and collect documents.
Precisely in how they accessed those files focused the questions of the lawyer of Juan Francisco Rosa, José Antonio Choclán Montalvo. "Those files, do not forget, are public", Díaz Reixa ended up responding, who had previously recounted the difficulties they encountered on the part of the Yaiza City Council to access the documents. As for the Government of the Canary Islands, Choclán himself related that after being denounced, Juan Francisco Rosa went to the Ministry to find out if they had given the file of his winery to one of the plaintiffs. And he also maintained that they responded with a certificate stating that there is no record of the request for that file. "I don't know, I have no responsibility in the Registry of the Ministry", the witness responded when the lawyer asked him how it could be that that paper was not on record. In any case, Díaz Reixa even gave data on how they gave him the file, scanned and on a pen drive.
Letters and calls asking them to "help" and "expedite" procedures
On Wednesday, two Seprona agents also testified. One of them carried out an inspection of the facilities at the request of the Investigating Court and the other, in addition, provided the Court with two letters to which he had access. One of them was signed by Juan Francisco Rosa and addressed to the then mayor, José Francisco Reyes. And in the text he said, "as you will know", that he had just submitted a request to condition his farm in Uga. "I would ask you to expedite it in the Technical Office", he asked Reyes in that letter, after informing him that he had just received a visit from Seprona, because the works were already underway without authorization.
In addition, during the hearing this Wednesday, some of the calls intercepted in the Unión case were also heard, in which Leonardo Rodríguez's telephone was tapped. In some, the councilor spoke with Rosa about the Yaiza General Plan, about different requests from Rosa and also about procedures that some acquaintances of the businessman were going to carry out, such as one to whom he sold some land and to whom they were putting obstacles to obtain a license.
In one of those conversations, the businessman and the councilor spoke expressly of the classified activities license that the City Council had to grant to Stratvs. "I have everything from the Cabildo delivered. I only need your opening", Rosa told the councilor in that conversation. "So that you can help me if you can", he is heard saying in that call, as the prosecutor underlined. In another, both spoke of meeting to discuss "two things" that the businessman wanted to discuss with the councilor. "We eat together, if they don't criticize us", Rosa said in that call. "And do you think that if we don't do it they will stop criticizing us?", the councilor replied.
A Local Police officer nuanced his own report of the frustrated inspection in Stratvs
On Wednesday, a National Police agent also testified who personally went to the City Council to request information "immediately" at the request of the Investigating Court. "Is that usual?", the prosecutor asked him. "No, normally not", the agent replied. And a local police officer from Yaiza also appeared as a witness, who was present at the first inspection carried out in Stratvs by order of the mayor, Gladys Acuña, after declaring as an accused in this case. An inspection that was suspended after receiving a call from Juan Francisco Rosa.
"I have never been in the situation of not being allowed to enter an inspection", declared the Local Police officer, who could not specify if "the normal thing" is to notify the affected party that their business is going to be inspected. In addition, although in the report he drew up that day he stated that the inspection was suspended after the head of the Technical Office, Antonio Lorenzo, received a call from Juan Francisco Rosa, in the trial he pointed out that that call was not received "on Lorenzo's personal mobile", but that "an employee" of Rosa "passed it on" to the telephone. And he also said, despite what was stated in the report, that "he does not know the reason why the technicians decided to stop doing the inspection".
"I wanted to record that a call was received. It can be misinterpreted", he pointed out when asked by one of the defense lawyers, thus coinciding with the version that Antonio Lorenzo himself had given that same morning, assuring that that call was not received on his personal mobile. Faced with this statement, which the Prosecutor's Office and the popular accusation understood as a change of version in a relevant fact -given that part of the object of this cause are the "calls" that Rosa made, as the prosecutor specified- both parties asked the police officer who his hierarchical superiors are in the City Council, to which he confirmed that several are sitting on the bench of the accused, in addition to being a cousin of one of them, José Francisco Reyes.
And when asked by the prosecution, he also confirmed that he has served as secretary of the City Council when that position was vacant, and that he continues to do so when it is necessary to replace the current secretary, and that in those periods he has an "increase in his salary".
