Almost 14 years after José Francisco Reyes granted the Costa Roja license, which authorized the construction of more than a thousand homes, 228 commercial premises and 2,559 parking spaces at the entrance to Playa Blanca, the case is finally close to being judged in criminal proceedings, after the accusation documents have already been presented. This same plot was the one that later gave rise to the Unión case, when Luis Lleó tried to bribe the then councilor and island secretary of the PSOE, Carlos Espino. With that bribe, the businessman was trying to unblock this project, since the license had been appealed in the contentious-administrative route by the Cabildo and also denounced in the criminal route by Espino himself.
However, while that piece of Unión was already tried and convicted more than a year ago - with Lleó's confession -, this previous procedure had been paralyzed for years in the Court of Instruction Number 3 of Arrecife, during the stage of Judge Rafael Lis. When this magistrate retired - who had links with Juan Francisco Rosa and was sanctioned for having continued to intervene in a procedure in which he had been challenged for that reason - the judge who replaced him took up this and other cases that had been delayed for years in his Court.
Now, after the investigation has finally closed, the Public Prosecutor's Office and the popular accusation, exercised by Carlos Espino, have already requested the opening of oral proceedings and have formulated an accusation against the former mayor of Yaiza, José Francisco Reyes, the former secretary, Vicente Bartolomé Fuentes, and the former head of the Technical Office, Antonio Lorenzo.
In the case of the Prosecutor's Office, it has considerably reduced the penalties it requests due to the “extraordinary and undue delays” that have occurred in the investigation. In this regard, it points out that “the processing of the procedure was paralyzed, without any substantive resolution being adopted in it, from March 14, 2013 to November 7, 2019”, coinciding with a good part of the period in which Rafael Lis was the head of the Court.
Due to this delay, which is considered a mitigating factor when imposing sentences, the Public Prosecutor's Office only requests fines and disqualification penalties for the three defendants for a crime of urban planning prevarication. In the case of the fine, it sets it at 3,960 euros for each one, while for absolute disqualification it demands three years and three months. However, none of the three currently hold the positions they held and are outside the Consistory, precisely due to other previous firm convictions for urban planning crimes.
For its part, the popular accusation raises the request to one year and three months in prison and seven years of disqualification, considering that it was not a single crime but a continuous crime. And it is that a year after granting the building permit, the accused also approved the execution project, despite the repeated warnings they had already received from the Cabildo about its illegality. In its writing, the accusation also recognizes that undue delays, attributable to the judicial investigation, should be applied as a mitigating factor. Thus, although it requests a prison sentence, it does not request the maximum, which in any case would be only two years in prison as established by the Penal Code for this crime.
An file for a macro-project resolved in three months
In its qualification document, the accusation recalls that it was on August 31, 2006 when Luis Lleó, on behalf of the entity Residencial Costa Roja SL, presented the license application for this macro-project that he intended to carry out at the entrance to Playa Blanca. Only 13 days later, the secretary, Vicente Bartolomé Fuentes, “with full knowledge of the illegality of the project”, issued a legal report in which he “consciously and grossly ignores his obligations and duties” and “limits himself to giving the appearance of legality to the file”, “limiting himself to generically listing legal precepts and requirements that should have been met” and without “making express reference to the project that was being reported or whether such legal requirements concurred in it”.
Two months later, the other defendant, Antonio Lorenzo, issued his report as head of the Technical Office. And according to the accusation, he did so “in order to give the appearance of legality to the authorization of an illegal project and decisively contributing to the granting of the license by the mayor”. In that report, he points out that he limited himself “to speculating on alleged reasons why the project could fit, deliberately and crudely ignoring to pronounce on the manifest illegality of the same”. Both Lorenzo and Bartolomé Fuentes have already been convicted in other cases for a similar 'modus operandi', which consisted of issuing reports empty of content, on which Reyes later based himself to grant the licenses.
Finally, 20 days after having that report, the mayor granted the permit, completing in three months and five days the file to authorize the construction of a project that would have multiplied the population of Playa Blanca, since it implied more beds than inhabitants Tinajo had at that time.
Warnings from the Cabildo and even a Plenary Session to adopt measures
In addition, the accusation recalls that Reyes, Bartolomé and Lorenzo ignored a report by Alfredo Morales Armas that classified that land as rustic, and also “prevented the exercise by the Cabildo and the Government of the Canary Islands of their powers”. In fact, not only did they not request the required reports, but they directly hid that license from the Island Corporation for months.
It was La Voz de Lanzarote who made it public in February 2007. “The public knowledge and social alarm of a project that was clearly oversized by the accused caused that between the months of February and April 2007 the Island Council of Lanzarote convened meetings with municipal representatives and presented numerous writings to said municipal corporation warning of the illegality of the intended action”, recalls the accusation.
Even, a Plenary Session was held in the Cabildo to report on the measures that were going to be adopted, and the then president, Inés Rojas, sent the minutes of that Plenary Session to the City Council, “insisting on the illegality that was being committed and warning of the beginning of legal actions in order to preserve legality”.
However, the accused not only “ignored” the warnings, but then began to process the execution file. And in this case, they resolved everything on the same day. On June 8, 2007, Antonio Lorenzo issued a technical report, Vicente Bartolomé a legal report and Reyes granted the license.
The Island Corporation then appealed this permit in the contentious-administrative route, obtaining precautionary measures that allowed the project not to be executed, although it finally did not undertake criminal actions. The one who did was the then councilor Carlos Espino, with a complaint that is what gave rise to this cause, and the one that will now put the former mayor and two of the technicians who have already been convicted along with him in other proceedings back in the dock.
In the case of Reyes and Bartolomé Fuentes, they even confessed in the Yate case that they had granted licenses knowing of their illegality, and the former mayor also acknowledged that he had done so in exchange for bribes from different businessmen. As for this case, a crime of bribery was also initially investigated and Lleó himself was charged, but the charges were finally dropped as “sufficient evidence” of the payment of a bribe in exchange for the granting of that illegal macro-license was not found.