The lawyer Felipe Fernández Camero already has a date for his first trial for corruption, for the embezzlement of almost one million euros from the Yaiza City Council. The investigation of the case was closed seven years ago and the indictment was presented in mid-2015, but until now the date of the hearing had not been set, which has finally been set for the second half of next June.
If there are no changes, the trial will begin on June 13 in Arrecife, before the First Section of the Provincial Court, and will last for nine days, concluding on the 23rd. Along with Camero, the former mayor of Yaiza, José Francisco Reyes, the former secretary, Vicente Bartolomé Fuentes, and another official of the Consistory, Antonio Fernández Martín, who acted as secretary-intervenor during part of the period in which the events occurred, will be on the stand.
The Prosecutor's Office is asking for 6 years in prison and 10 years of disqualification for Felipe Fernández Camero for the "arbitrary looting of public funds" of the Yaiza City Council, since it maintains that he charged the Consistory almost one million euros outside the law, without any legal contracting or services provided to justify these payments.
The same penalty of 6 years in prison and 10 years of disqualification is requested for José Francisco Reyes and Vicente Bartolomé Fuentes, while for Antonio Fernández Martín he demands 5 and a half years in prison and 9 years of disqualification.
In addition, the Public Prosecutor's Office asks that all of them be sentenced to pay significant sums as civil liability, to return "jointly and severally" the money to the Consistory, in the amount that each one allegedly contributed to embezzle. In the case of Reyes, he asks that he be liable for 842,721.28 euros, in the case of Bartolomé Fuentes for 726,260.56 euros and in the case of Fernández Martín for 115,742.63 euros. For his part, Fernández Camero is claiming compensation of 970,752.28 euros. Of that amount, "the company Adelfas 24 SL will be subsidiarily liable for the amount of 311,727.63 euros", since part of the money was invoiced through that company.
All four are accused of a continuing crime of embezzlement of public funds and another of prevarication (in the case of Fernández Camero, as an instigator). In addition, Fernández Martín must answer for a crime of falsification of an official document and Felipe Fernández Camero for another continuing crime of falsification of a commercial document.
A twist in the investigation
This piece emerged from the Yate case, in which Reyes himself ended up confessing to receiving bribes in exchange for the granting of dozens of illegal licenses in Playa Blanca. During the investigation, the lawyer Felipe Fernández Camero was charged, as he was considered the mastermind of the alleged criminal plot.
Later, the prosecutor asked to dismiss that charge against him, as he did not find documentary evidence of his advice to the Yaiza City Council; but at the same time he requested to open a new piece against Camero for embezzlement. And he understood that if there were no documents to justify that advice, there was no justification for the monthly payments he received for years from the City Council.
In addition to this trial, Felipe Fernández Camero also has another pending within the Unión case, in the main piece derived from Operation Jable. In that case, which has also been under investigation for years and pending trial, the Prosecutor's Office is asking for 11 and a half years in prison for crimes of embezzlement and bribery, among others. In this case, his time as secretary of the Arrecife City Council, under the Mayoralty of María Isabel Déniz, is being investigated. The Prosecutor's Office considers that Camero contributed to 'rigging' the award of the garbage collection service to Urbaser (then under the name of Tecmed) and that in exchange he received bribes from the company, including a trip to Kenya, to which the former mayor and the couples of both went.
For his defense in the separate piece of the Yate case, Camero has ended up hiring the same lawyer who represented the businessman Juan Francisco Rosa in the Stratvs case, José Antonio Choclán Montalvo. Rosa was one of the beneficiaries of the illegal licenses granted by Reyes, and for years had Fernández Camero as his lawyer.