The trial for the alleged embezzlement of almost one million euros from the Yaiza City Council was adjourned for sentencing this Monday, with a request for 6 years in prison for the lawyer Felipe Fernández Camero. The same penalty is requested for the former mayor, José Francisco Reyes, and for the former secretary-auditor, Vicente Bartolomé Fuentes, while the fourth defendant, the former municipal worker Antonio Fernández Martín, faces a request for 5 and a half years in prison.
“The penalty has to be high, it couldn't be otherwise,” the prosecutor pointed out when presenting his conclusions, in which he underlined the high “amount” that was taken from public coffers, the “criminal continuity” - between the years 1996 and 2008 - and the “concurrence of crimes”, which include embezzlement, prevarication and document forgery.
In addition, the prosecutor has underlined not only the economic damage caused to the Council, but also the “devastating immaterial damage”, due to the loss of citizens' trust in institutions.
Along with prison sentences and disqualification for the four defendants, the Public Prosecutor's Office asks that they be sentenced to return 970,752 euros to the Council, each of them being jointly liable for the amount they allegedly contributed to embezzling.
In his final argument, the prosecutor recalled that Fernández Camero received “two types of payment” from the City Council. On the one hand, he charged a monthly amount for “alleged legal advice services”, first in his name and from 2004 - after being sanctioned by Public Function as secretary of Arrecife - through his company, Adelfas 24.
“No benefit to the Yaiza City Council was justified, beyond the personal profit of the accused,” the representative of the Prosecutor's Office underlined.
To this were added other payments for his alleged representation as a lawyer in different proceedings, and even the payment of expenses for travel, allowances and even taxis, “without attribution to a specific service.”
In this regard, the prosecutor referred to the reports of the judicial experts who have testified during the trial, and who confirmed the irregularities both of the direct awards to Camero and of the payments, which were made without the corresponding file, and therefore without being able to verify if they conformed to “services provided.”
In addition, he has also tried to dismantle one of the theses of the defense, which cited as witnesses two lawyers who also provided services for Yaiza more than two decades ago. “Despite the attempts carried out by the defense to establish a situation of equality, bestial differentiating elements are observed,” the prosecutor pointed out, highlighting among other things that they “did provide their services,” that they “did not unilaterally set the price,” nor did they “unilaterally increase it,” and that they also did not incur a cause of incompatibility, as happened with Camero, who was first also secretary of the Arrecife City Council and then, in addition, was sanctioned by Public Function, which prevented him from working for the administration.
To this he has added another element regarding the declaration of these lawyers: “None of them remembers that the accused Felipe Fernández Camero provided services for the City Council,” despite the fact that they supposedly coincided for several years.
The defense maintains that the Contracts Law does not have to be applied
For their part, the defenses have requested acquittal, clinging to a plenary agreement from four decades ago, to which they have been referring since the first day of the trial, to maintain that Camero was already appointed legal advisor to Yaiza 16 years before Reyes' arrival to the Mayor's Office. That 1980 agreement established a monthly payment of 50,000 pesetas (300 euros per month) for advisory services, but in the stage of José Francisco Reyes he received almost one million euros without any prior awards or budgets being recorded.
However, Camero's lawyer, José Antonio Choclán Montalvo, has insisted that this plenary agreement covered the subsequent awards, and has questioned that the prosecution and the judicial experts have emphasized the breach of the Contracts Law.
“It is not disputed that it does not conform to the Contracts Law,” “it does not comply with a single one of the parameters given by that law,” the lawyer admitted, and then added that, according to his thesis, “the question is not that.” “The question is whether it is applicable,” he defended, alleging that “no evidence has been presented” in this regard, nor “on the crime of embezzlement.”
In addition, he has described the accusation as “irrational,” “arbitrary,” “selective” and even “frivolous,” and has insisted on the “lack of evidence.” “Where is the evidence that Felipe Fernández Camero decided on the fee?” he questioned in reference to the invoices he charged to the Council for that monthly “advice,” and which were increased without any municipal agreement on those amounts being recorded. For the lawyer, “the progressive increase was reasonable,” and the fact that there is no document to support it does not mean that his client agreed to it “unilaterally.”
"He protected the interests of the developers"
“Felipe Fernández Camero's advice consisted of breaking the law.” That is what the lawyer of the popular accusation, exercised by Urban Transparency, has stated for her part, who has underlined that Camero was also a lawyer for the developers who obtained illegal licenses from the City Council, in addition to being secretary of Arrecife and lawyer for four other city councils. “It was impossible, unless he had the gift of ubiquity, to fulfill his job,” the lawyer has stated, who has recalled the different companies that he also had in his name, and whose corporate purpose was the “tourist promotion” and the “construction” in Yaiza, where he worked as an advisor.
“What legal advice did he give? What interest did he protect? The interests of the developers,” the lawyer concluded, recalling the criminal proceedings in which both Reyes and Bartolomé Fuentes have already been convicted.
In particular, she has emphasized the Yate case, in which Fernández Camero was charged as the alleged instigator of José Francisco Reyes' criminal conduct. However, the charges against him were eventually dismissed, because “there was no way to prove that it was what has been declared here: the urban legal advisor.”
That is what the lawyer has highlighted in her conclusions, by putting on the table the contradictions between what Reyes and Bartolomé Fuentes declared in that case, and what they have stated in the trial of this separate piece for embezzlement. “In Yate, Vicente Bartolomé declared that he practically did not know Camero, that he had never made urban planning consultations to him,” she recalled, contrasting it with his statement in this trial, in which they have spoken of “constant” advice to justify those payments.
In addition, she has referred to the “omertá” (the “law of silence”) and the “submission” of the mayor and the secretary to Fernández Camero. “He has submitted them so much that they have served years in prison for protecting him,” she stated, referring to the convictions of both in the Yate case.
In this regard, she recalled that in that case it was demonstrated that public officials and employees of Yaiza violated urban planning legality, allowing the municipality to develop “at the whim of the developers.” And in the case of Reyes, he himself confessed that he did so in exchange for bribes.
Meanwhile, Fernández Camero worked as a lawyer for some of the beneficiaries of those licenses and at the same time “advised” the City Council. “The works he carried out were useless. They did not benefit the interest of Yaiza, but rather harmed the City Council,” the lawyer of the accusation has questioned.
“It is nothing more than selling the public interests of the City Council in favor of his private clients,” she added, highlighting that the Council defended in the courts the same “theses” as those developers. In addition, she recalled that Camero lost all those lawsuits against the Cabildo and against the César Manrique Foundation.
“Corruption is born in the darkness. And we are facing a case of corruption,” the lawyer warned the Court, pointing out that if there was no qualified personnel with legal knowledge in the City Council it was “because they did not want there to be,” because “they would have said that they were illegal licenses.” “But they had Camero,” she added.
In addition, she has highlighted the economic situation in which the City Council was left after Reyes' Mayor's Office, with a millionaire debt. “It ended in 2005, after the tourist boom, with a bankruptcy,” she pointed out, recalling that the City Council did not even collect the IBI from the Marina Rubicón sports port, whose license was also declared illegal. The lawyer referred to one of the promoters of that illegal port, Juan Francisco Rosa, who attended as a member of the public the first session of the trial held in Gran Canaria, in which Camero was scheduled to testify.
“The Yaiza City Council was plundered. Instead of distributing the wealth among the citizens, what it did was stay in the patrimony of Camero and the accused,” concluded the lawyer of Urban Transparency, who has adhered to the request for penalties from the Public Prosecutor's Office.
