The former auditor of the Arrecife City Council, Carlos Sáenz, and the engineer Antonio Cárdenas have confessed this Wednesday the crimes imputed to them by the Public Prosecutor's Office in piece number 12 of the Unión case, which began to be judged last Friday and which has continued on this day with the declaration of the accused.
The first to do so have been Cárdenas and Sáenz, and both have answered only the questions of the prosecutor, showing their agreement with the facts imputed to them. In the case of Sáenz, who is accused of embezzlement, prevarication, falsehood in mercantile document and fraud to the administration, he has recognized that he authorized the payment of false invoices without submitting them to any type of fiscalization because he had an agreement with the PIL, and specifically with the one who was councilman of Finance, José Miguel Rodríguez.
As for Antonio Cárdenas, the prosecutor already modified his indictment last Friday, eliminating the crime of fraud against the public administration and leaving only that of taking advantage of privileged information, which is what he has confessed. In addition, hand in hand with that change in the qualification, the prosecutor also modified the penalties requested for Cárdenas, removing the prison sentence and replacing it with a fine of 4,225 euros, with which the accused has already shown his conformity during the trial.
A brief statement
In a very brief statement, in which he has limited himself to answering "yes" to the prosecutor's questions, the engineer has acknowledged that the former councilman José Miguel Rodríguez provided him with a draft of the Neighborhood Plan, that valuation criteria were included there and that he took advantage of these data, which were secret and reserved, to obtain the payment with speed of seven invoices, for the amount of the fine that he has accepted.
In addition, during the trial, the different statements made during the instruction of this case by the deceased José Miguel Rodríguez, who was also accused and who after his arrest began to confess the crimes imputed to him, have also been read. And in one of those statements, the former councilman referred to the role of Antonio Cárdenas in the elaboration of the Neighborhood Plan and affirmed that the engineer followed direct instructions from Dimas Martín.
At that time, the historical leader of the PIL was serving a sentence but, as the instruction of this case maintains, he continued giving instructions even from prison to the public officials of his party and also to the professionals who were hired from the Consistory. In this way, according to the accusation, Dimas intervened both in the elaboration of plans as in the adjudication of works and in the exigency of commissions to businessmen for those adjudications or for the collection of invoices, in some cases for services that had not even been rendered or that were paid up to four times, as has recognized the own Carlos Sáenz.
Second confession of the former auditor
In his statement, the former auditor has also answered briefly to the questions of the prosecutor, and in most cases with monosyllables, confirming that he reached an "agreement" with José Miguel Rodríguez to validate any invoice that came from the areas of the PIL without verifying it and without carrying out any type of fiscalization, in spite of the fact that that was his obligation.
Thus, he has admitted that he allowed the City Council to pay inflated invoices and even for services that had not been rendered to the companies of the four businessmen who sit next to him on the bench of the accused, Antonio Gómez Ruiz, Manuel Gregorio Reina Fabre, Jesús Manuel Martín Brito and Samuel Lemes. He even authorized the payment of an invoice for the same service that had already been paid to another company, as well as the payment of four identical invoices for the same concept.
For Sáenz, who is currently in prison serving another sentence in the Unión case, this is his second confession. The first was in Fuerteventura, in the first piece that was judged of the Montecarlo case for facts occurred in the majorero City council of La Oliva, where he also was auditor. Now, this new attitude could also be transferred to other causes that he still has pending, including all the pieces of Montecarlo related to the city councils of Arrecife and San Bartolomé.
As for the cause that is being judged, Carlos Sáenz has recognized the facts although he has not shown himself in agreement with the penalty that the Prosecutor's Office initially asked for him, of 7 and a half years in prison and 10 of disqualification. However, predictably that petition will vary when at the end of the trial the definitive conclusions are presented. There, as it is habitual when confessions take place, the Public Prosecutor's Office could apply attenuating factors such as collaboration with justice.
