"It was very difficult for me to do them in their day. It's a disappointment. Normally we don't report negative things, but after what we had been through, I felt obliged to do so." This is how the technician of the Arrecife City Council, Elena Martín, referred to the reports she issued in 2011 warning of irregularities in the invoices of Inecon and Señalcon, when testifying this Monday as a witness in the Montecarlo case.
"What had happened" was the Unión case, which had broken out two years earlier, revealing the corruption that existed in the City Council. "We became even more demanding", "we all threaded even finer", the technician declared.
In her case, she was in the Contracting department and in 2011 she was also assigned to Purchases, which until then operated in parallel under the control of the comptroller. And it was then that she made warnings about the invoices investigated in this case.
Martín has confirmed that she forwarded her reports to two of the defendants sitting on the bench -the one who was Councilor for Festivities at that time, Eduardo Lasso, and the one who was Councilor for Finance, Isabel Martinón-, as well as the mayor, Cándido Reguera, and the comptroller, who already has other convictions and in this trial has also confessed to crimes of prevarication and embezzlement.
"It was me personally", the technician pointed out, thus denying the version given by Lasso and Martinón, who declared that those reports reached them in the middle of "a pile of papers" (in the case of Eduardo Lasso, he assured that he didn't even read them). "I took them and asked them to sign it in front of me", added Elena Martín.
What she has stated that she does not remember is whether she also gave them verbal explanations when handing them over or if they asked for them after reading them, but she has insisted that what she meant to say in the reports was: "Hey, I'm not going to process that".
Afterwards, she "doesn't know" what happened to those invoices -which ended up being paid-, because she asked the mayor to leave the Purchasing area. "I couldn't attend to both departments and I was afraid that something would escape me", she pointed out, insisting on the concern that existed after Operation Unión, in which she was even arrested, although she was one of the few people charged who went to trial and was acquitted.
"The contractor was proposed by the Council Department of the area"
Elena Martín has also stated that the powers of the council departments that require a work or a service are much greater than what the councilors and technicians accused in the case declared.
"The contractor was proposed by the Council Department", she affirmed, contrary to what the councilors and the "technicians" of Festivities and Roads and Works processed, who denied having anything to do with the hiring of Inelcon and Señalcon, and pointed to the mayor and the Purchasing and Contracting areas. "Purchasing didn't propose the contractor?", the prosecutor insisted. "No, no, no. Never", she responded emphatically, insisting that it came from the respective areas.
In addition, she has pointed out that her department did not set the price either. "The function of each area is to establish: I need this and I can spend this. And ask for quotes", she declared.
For this, she explained that from her department they gave them a model that was the one they had to fill out if it was a minor contract, in which they proposed who was going to be the awarding company, or inviting three companies to present quotes. "And if it exceeded the limit, it had to go to an open procedure", she recalled, confirming that in this case there was a splitting of invoices to avoid that public tender.
"Two-headed contracting"
As has been highlighted in other corruption trials in the Arrecife City Council, Elena Martín has reiterated that Purchasing and Contracting operated independently, in what one of the defense lawyers has defined as a "two-headed contracting".
"I understand that Purchasing was more for day-to-day things, small supplies", she pointed out, reiterating that she "didn't know" what was happening in Purchasing. However, the reality is that through that department controlled directly by Carlos Sáenz, invoices for millionaire amounts ended up being processed, instead of sending them to Contracting.
"As far as I know, Purchasing has never had a technician. The only one I have been is me. It has always been dependent on the comptroller", explained Elena Martín, who was a Purchasing technician for a few months, until she herself asked to leave the area, just after warning of irregularities in several invoices.
Among other things, she recalled that they presented her with expense proposals dated after the alleged provision of the service, when that must be a prior document to guarantee that there is a budget. "To pay in a minor contract, only the approval of the expense and the invoice are required, but if an expense proposal is made, it must be prior", she added to questions from the prosecutor.
In addition, she has stressed that it is the one who signs the invoice from the corresponding Council Department who must verify that the service has been executed and that it is "in accordance with the price". And also "check the concepts" included in the invoice (such as the 22% that Inelcon and Señalcon charged for general expenses and industrial profit, despite the fact that they were service contracts and not works).
Regarding who should sign the invoices, she has explained that the law does not establish it, but that in the execution base of the Arrecife budgets it was indicated that it should be the technician and the councilor of the area, although she has opined that it is "absurd" and that the person with the most knowledge to do so was the technician.
The current mayor and several former councilors
During Monday's session, the current mayor of Arrecife, Ástrid Pérez, also testified as a representative of the City Council, which is exercising the private prosecution in this case. In her brief intervention, Pérez was only questioned by the prosecutor, who asked her to confirm that the City Council is claiming the return of the allegedly embezzled money. "Yes, indeed", she responded, clarifying that she was not part of the City Council at the time the events occurred.
In addition, former councilors of the City Council who were in the City Council at that time also appeared as witnesses, such as the former councilor of Alternativa Ciudadana Blanca Blancas. In her case, she was asked about the Plenary in which a list of invoices was approved -among which were included many from Inelcon and Señalcon- to pay them through an ICO credit, with an extrajudicial recognition.
"We complained that the procedures had not been correct and that is why they were going to extrajudicial recognition", recalled Blancas, whose intervention in that session is recorded in the minutes of the Plenary that was incorporated into the summary of this case.
Regarding who defended their payment in that Plenary, she referred to the comptroller, but also to the then mayor, Cándido Reguera, and to the one who was Councilor for Finance, José Montelongo.
The one who was then councilor of CC in the opposition, María Teresa Lorenzo, also had a harsh intervention in that Plenary, accusing the government group of "using the drawer technique". Lorenzo was summoned as a witness but has not been able to appear for medical reasons, as well as Manolo Fajardo Feo, who was mayor of Arrecife after the events that are being investigated.
The one who has testified is another of the councilors who were in the opposition when that plenary of recognition of invoices was held, the former councilor of the PIL Juan Jesús González Docal, who has not remembered details of that session.
The other former councilor who has testified this Monday has been María Dolores Rodríguez, who was councilor of Education and Culture for the PSOE, although she has been asked about a time when she was in the opposition. The one who had requested her statement was the defense of Miguel Ángel Leal, who worked as a Festivities technician and signed invoices, although his category was that of sociocultural animator.
In her case, the lawyer has only shown her photographs of different parties that she attended as a councilor, since Leal's defense focuses on maintaining that the events of the invoices that she authorized were carried out. However, the former councilor has clarified to questions from the prosecution that she neither knew the scope of the contracts nor was in charge of supervising their compliance, since she attended only as a councilor of the opposition.
"It seems that they understood that the procedure was not entirely correct"
The other four witnesses who have testified in this day are workers from different areas of the City Council. One of them, Manuel Martín, is an administrative assistant in Intervention and when the events occurred he worked in the parallel registry of invoices that was in the office of Carlos Sáenz.
"At that time they could present them directly in intervention", he pointed out, confirming that they did not go through the General Registry and that they were entered with a manual stamp. "In 2011 that stamp was removed. An instance was drawn up that they had to be presented in the Registry", he recalled. "What was the reason?", the prosecutor asked him. "They never made it clear to us. It seems that they understood that the procedure was not entirely correct", he responded.
In this regard, the one who was then secretary of Arrecife, Asenet Padrón, declared last week that that registry was "illegal" and that it had "no type of control", so she ordered that it be eliminated as soon as she became aware of its existence.
To questions from the defense of José Montelongo, the worker has pointed out that he did not receive "suggestions, indications or pressures" from him to include the invoices of Inelcon and Señalcon in the list of invoices that were going to be recognized in the Plenary. He has also pointed out that he only participated in the elaboration of one of those lists and that Montelongo did not intervene, while in the rest "he does not know".
"If the councilor alters the order of payment, he has to motivate it"
Another of the workers who has testified this Monday has been María Teresa Duarte Medina, who replaced the treasurer in some periods. And on one of the occasions, she did so replacing the official who had been initially designated. "The mayor called me saying that I had to replace the person because they were having problems with her", she declared.
That worker was Mari Carmen Villaverde, who last week testified as a witness and affirmed that she was temporarily replacing the treasurer and was removed from office by Montelongo. "We had some differences of opinion about some payments that were going to be made and he replaced me with another person", she declared, explaining that the one who was Councilor for Finance "was not in agreement" with the invoices being paid in order of seniority.
Regarding the technician who replaced her and who also held that position accidentally in other periods, she has pointed out this Monday that she also received "instructions" from Montelongo "to skip the order of payments", although to questions from the defense she has qualified that it is not illegal. "If the councilor alters the order of payment, he has to motivate it", she has underlined.
Duarte has also declared that after holding that position on several occasions, she asked not to be appointed again, because she had problems with the comptroller.
Finally, the current interim comptroller, Sandra Leticia Estelle, and another Intervention technician, Elena López Armas, who prepared reports within this case at the request of the Court, have also testified. Both have limited themselves to recognizing their signature on the report, pointing out that in their day they would make the necessary "checks" to issue it.
In addition, several of the workers have also been asked about the relationship that existed between the comptroller, Carlos Sáenz, and the treasurer, Antonio Cabrera Panasco (who is a witness in this case); and while one has pointed out that they had "no relationship" and that "they did not speak", others have affirmed that it was "a professional relationship", although "at some point there was some discrepancy".
