The former president of the Party of Independents of Lanzarote (PIL) has acknowledged that he "received 72,000 euros" from the company TECMED SA (now Urbaser) to obtain the garbage contract from the Arrecife City Council.
Martín remains in prison serving a sentence of seven years and five months for the crimes of illicit association, embezzlement in conjunction with fraud, prevarication and bribery in a final judgment of the Supreme Court for the Unión case. For that reason, he has testified from prison.
Meanwhile, the then head of the Technical Office of the Arrecife City Council, Juan Rafael Arrocha, has acknowledged that he "rigged" the public tender for garbage collection of the Arrecife City Council in 2002.
Arrocha's job was to access the "proposals of all the companies that had submitted to the tender". In addition, he assured that it was the secretary of the City Council, Felipe Fernández Camero, who gave him access to these specifications to know the awarding companies.
"There was a company that slightly exceeded, the one that was later number two," confessed the head of the Technical Office in the first session of the oral trial.
"Fix this no matter what"
"It was in the interest of the mayor of Arrecife, Isabel Déniz (2001-2007) to know as soon as possible" the content of the proposals received by the Arrecife City Council. At that time, Rafael Arrocha acknowledged that he commented to Isabel Déniz that the result obtained from his assessment did not favor TECMED (now Urbaser). "She told me: Fix this no matter what. There was only one way, to modify the improvements that were proposed, to offer the City Council three or four more improvements," he added.
"I absolutely believe that Felipe Fernández Camero agreed with that," he insisted. In addition, he assured that this information was transmitted to the manager and delegate of TECMED (Urbaser) in Lanzarote, Jacinto Álvarez, so that he could modify his offer.
Likewise, when questioned by the Court, Juan Rafael Arrocha confessed that he himself "switched" the project and added "five pages" to make it the winner of the tender.
In addition, during the period in which this tender remained closed, the secretary of the Arrecife City Council, Felipe Fernández Camero, allegedly received some specifications from Jacinto Álvarez, according to Juan Rafael Arrocha's version.
After the deadline for proposals had closed and before the resolutions were made public, Urbaser's project was modified to make it more favorable and for the company to be the winner.
