The trial for the alleged embezzlement of almost one million euros from the Yaiza Town Hall has begun this Tuesday, after the last attempt by the defense of the main defendant, Felipe Fernández Camero, to have the hearing suspended failed.
What he has managed to avoid is the image of the dock, appealing to his status as a lawyer to sit next to his lawyers, José Antonio Choclán Montalvo and his daughter, Juana Fernández de las Heras, who represents the company Adelfas 24, through which Camero also charged invoices to Yaiza.
The First Section of the Provincial Court has agreed to this request, but has authorized the other three defendants - the former mayor, José Francisco Reyes, the former secretary-auditor, Vicente Bartolomé Fuentes, and the official who replaced him during his vacations, Antonio Fernández - to do the same. Thus, the dock has been left empty and the defendants, after a few moments of confusion in the room to rearrange the seats, have ended up placing themselves next to their respective lawyers.
Before, the lawyers had been meeting with the Public Prosecutor and the lawyer for the private prosecution, to offer an agreement. Apparently, their proposal was to recognize one of the crimes they are accused of, that of prevarication, if the other, embezzlement, which is the one that implies prison sentences, was eliminated.
Both the prosecutor and the private prosecution have rejected that proposal and, with an hour and a half delay, the hearing has begun, although the defenses have taken advantage of the preliminary issues to try again to have it suspended.
In the case of Camero's lawyer, he has presented a new expert report, intending to have it admitted at the beginning of the hearing. According to the prosecutor, he intended to "force the suspension of the trial", because admitting it would have caused "defenselessness" to the prosecution, which must have time to analyze it and counteract it with another opinion if necessary.
"It is not appropriate to admit the evidence. It is untimely and does not fit in the Criminal Procedure Law", the Chamber has ended up responding, recalling the years that the defense has had to provide the evidence it deemed pertinent.
In addition, as the Prosecutor's Office and the private prosecution had warned, it has stressed that admitting that report "would require the suspension of the trial." "And this Court considers that it is not appropriate," concluded the president of the Chamber, thus finally beginning the hearing, eight years after the investigation of this case concluded.
The defenses allege statute of limitations for one of the crimes
As for the rest of the preliminary issues, the defenses of all the defendants have maintained that the crime of prevarication - which was precisely the one they would have been willing to admit - would already be prescribed. To this end, they have gone back to a plenary agreement of 1980, by which the hiring of Felipe Fernández Camero as legal advisor to the Yaiza Town Hall, under the Mayoralty of Honoro García Bravo, would have been agreed.
Although the events being judged started in 1996, already with José Francisco Reyes as mayor, the four defense lawyers have clung to a kind of inherited situation. Thus, they have maintained that the crime that could be imputed to their clients would be prevarication by omission, by having maintained that situation without legalizing it - with the corresponding contracting procedures - and have defended that that crime would already be prescribed.
"It is absolutely unfeasible for the statute of limitations to operate," the prosecutor has responded, who has recalled that they are accused of a "criminal continuity" between the years 1996 and 2012. In that period, Camero charged almost one million euros from Yaiza, both for representation in lawsuits and with monthly payments as alleged advice. However, in the main piece of the Yate case, no documentary trace of that advice was found, which forced the dismissal of the indictment against him in that case - in which he was being investigated as the alleged instigator of Reyes' criminal conduct in the granting of illegal licenses - and at the same time gave rise to this separate piece, accusing him then of embezzlement.
In this case, although the defenses asked that this preliminary issue - on the alleged statute of limitations for one of the crimes - be resolved before the trial began, the Court has responded that "given the legal complexity" and the direct relationship it has with the facts that are to be considered proven, it will be resolved when the sentence is handed down.
The same has been answered to another preliminary issue, raised in this case by the defense of Antonio Fernández, who alleged defenselessness in relation to a third crime for which he is accused, of document forgery. His lawyer has argued that in his day, the investigating judge refused to summon him as a defendant for that crime, and did not refer to it either when he summoned him later for the other two.
The lawyer has acknowledged that in that interrogation, the Prosecutor's Office did ask him expressly about a certificate he issued, assuring that Fernández Camero had provided some services, but he has insisted that the crime of document forgery was not mentioned again until the indictment was filed, and then in the order to open the oral trial.
In his opinion, this is a "surprise accusation" that violates his right of defense, although both the Prosecutor's Office and the private prosecution, exercised by Urban Transparency, have maintained the opposite. "It is manifestly untrue," the prosecutor has responded, stressing that during the investigation he was already asked about "that mendacious document", which he considers he signed being "aware that those services were not provided."
To this, the lawyer of the private prosecution has added that in the order that put an end to the investigation, to which the defense had also referred, the crimes were not "delimited" because the function of that order is to "describe facts", corresponding its qualification to the parties, when formulating the indictments, which are also not elevated to definitive until the end of the trial.
"Yaiza does not defend legality"
To these has been added another preliminary issue, raised in this case by Camero's lawyer, who has questioned the "legitimacy" of the private prosecution to make civil claims, in reference to the embezzled money that he requests to be returned to the Yaiza Town Hall.
In this regard, Choclán Montalvo has referred to the fact that the City Council has not even appeared in the case, to which the lawyer of the prosecution has responded recalling all the corruption trials related to Yaiza in which the City Council has not appeared.
"Of course Yaiza does not claim. That is what this trial is about. About individuals who use the City Council for their private interests. Yaiza does not defend the general interest and does not defend legality," he has reproached.
Change of order and resignation of several witnesses
The first session of the trial, despite the delay in the start time, has ended up being much shorter than expected, as the parties have renounced the majority of the witnesses who were summoned for this day. Among them were two former mayors after José Francisco Reyes, Ángel Domínguez and Gladys Acuña, who have gone to the courthouse but have ended up leaving, after being notified that they were finally not going to testify.
In addition, the defendants have not yet testified, since contrary to what is usually the case, the Chamber has agreed that they do so after the witnesses. In the case of Reyes, it has been agreed that he will testify last in the session this Wednesday, and his lawyer has asked that it be by videoconference, since he has alleged health reasons to ask that he not be forced to be present throughout the trial.
In fact, after resolving the preliminary issues, he has been authorized to leave the Chamber, as he has explained that he had to go to the hospital, where he receives daily treatment.
Honorio García Bravo and two other witnesses on the first day of trial
Who has testified this Tuesday has been Reyes' predecessor in office, Honorio García Bravo, who was mayor between 1976 and 1994. His appearance had been requested by the defense of José Francisco Reyes, to ask him about the first hiring of Camero as advisor to the City Council under his mandate.
However, García Bravo has referred to the time elapsed and has responded that he does not remember most of the questions. Thus, he has confirmed that Felipe Fernández Camero was hired in his time as legal advisor, like other lawyers, but has not been able to give details either about the plenary agreement of 1980 to which the defenses refer, or about other issues for which he has been questioned.
Along with him, on this first day of the trial only two other witnesses have testified. One of them is a social graduate and works in the City Council as head of the Personnel department. Her intervention in the case focuses only on a report she issued at the request of the Investigating Court, communicating the periods in which one of the defendants, Antonio Fernández, had replaced Vicente Bartolomé Fuentes as secretary-auditor.
The other witness to testify has been the current secretary-auditor, who arrived at the post some time after Bartolomé Fuentes had been removed from office for his first criminal conviction.
In his statement, he has also been asked about a report he prepared, as well as about Camero's invoices that were pending payment in 2012, when a payment was made to suppliers through a state decree.
Regarding the report he had to prepare for the Court, with the list of payments to Fernández Camero during the previous two decades, he has pointed out that it "cost" them to find the documentation to prepare it.
"The files were in several areas. There was a kind of attic and something also in the area of the staircase. And there was also another room. All distributed, without much order," he recalled.
