The Second Section of the Provincial Court will try next Monday the former PP councilor in San Bartolomé Pedro Reyes, the former auditor Carlos Sáenz and the businessman José Daniel Hernández, who are accused of having embezzled almost 600,000 from the San Bartolomé Town Hall between 2004 and 2007.
The facts are practically identical to those that were judged and condemned in a piece of the Unión case, focused on the fraudulent payments to this same businessman by the Arrecife Town Hall. In that trial, José Daniel Hernández already shared the dock with Carlos Sáenz, who was an auditor in both Arrecife and San Bartolomé and who also has other convictions behind him, for embezzling funds from both town halls. In addition, all the last ones were dictated by conformity, after Sáenz confessed the crimes.
In this new case, the Prosecutor's Office asks that the three defendants be convicted of crimes of prevarication, falsification of commercial documents, fraud and embezzlement of public funds. For both Sáenz and Pedro Reyes, it asks for six years in prison and ten years of disqualification, while for José Daniel Hernández it requests five years and six months in prison and nine years of disqualification.
"They created the appearance that services were going to be provided"
In its indictment, the Prosecutor's Office maintains that the three defendants agreed and "devised a plan that had the purpose of the arbitrary plundering of funds from the San Bartolomé Town Hall", so that José Daniel Hernández "obtained an illicit patrimonial enrichment". To do this, "they created the appearance that certain lighting and other electricity services were going to be provided in the municipality of San Bartolomé, knowing that on many occasions, such services were not going to be executed".
In total, Hernández came to collect 582,813 euros from the San Bartolomé City Council through one of his companies, Proyectos y Servicios de Lanzarote. And according to the Prosecutor's Office, he did so "totally and absolutely disregarding the rules that regulated the public procurement procedure" and "under the fiction of multiple files", in which "the fiction of direct award by minor contract was created", when the truth is that the amount prevented resorting to that procedure and forced to put it out to tender.
In addition, of the 36 files that were processed, the Ministry maintains that "at least in 13 of them the work was not carried out or the service object of the contract was not provided". In this way, it considers proven that at least 155,061 euros were paid without the City Council obtaining any consideration, so that is the amount that it claims that the three defendants return jointly and severally to the City Council.
As for Pedro Reyes, he points out that he signed the conformity of 17 of those invoices as Councilor for Public Services, "despite having knowledge of their mendacity, assuming the expense and simulating that the contracting file was valid and that the service or work had been performed in the agreed conditions".
