"I have been presented as the manager of Finca de Uga in my time as a politician, but it is not true." That is what the former Minister of Agriculture and Environment of the Cabildo, Francisco Fabelo, has assured this Monday, who even appeared in two national media showing this company of Juan Francisco Rosa and being cited as manager. Since then, his impartiality was questioned both by the Prosecutor's Office and by the investigating judge of the Stratvs case, as well as by the previous Podemos group in the Cabildo, but it was this Monday, when testifying as a witness in the trial, when Fabelo gave a different version.
"I was a promoter of Finca de Uga with Juan Francisco Rosa, I think in 2007", he began by pointing out. Afterwards, he added that if he appeared showing this company on the Spanish Television program "Un país para comérselo", and later in a report in El País, it was only "as a promoter of that project", although in both he was presented as "master cheesemaker" and as "manager" of this Rosa company. What he has not clarified is why he did not ask for a rectification after the broadcast of the first program in 2013, considering that he held a public office, nor why he agreed to appear in the article that El País made later in 2018, where they also referred to him as manager.
In fact, he did not even clarify his employment situation before the Plenary of the Cabildo, despite the requests for appearance made at that time by Podemos, demanding, among other things, that he explain whether he had requested compatibility to be able to work for Rosa while holding a position in the Island Corporation (first as a councilor and then as head of Food Sovereignty). "He does not need to do so, because Finca de Uga does not pay him," said the president of the Cabildo, Pedro San Ginés, who merely denied that there was a salary, but did not deny that Fabelo was the manager of this company.
For his part, the former councilor has not cleared up all the doubts in his statement this Monday either. And it is that although he has denied that he was the manager of Finca de Uga, he has not denied that he provided other services. In fact, when the prosecutor asked him if he had continued to develop any private professional work for Rosa while holding public office, his answer did not clarify the situation. "My employment status is veterinary technician. Outside of my working hours I have not stopped having contact with some people, not being hired by them," the former councilor of the Cabildo, who managed key areas both in terms of issuing environmental reports and in promotion and in the payment of subsidies and aid linked to the primary sector, limited himself to answering.
San Ginés still doesn't "know" if Fabelo worked for Rosa
As for San Ginés, who also testified this Monday as a witness, he avoided giving explanations about the employment relationship that one of the strong men of his government maintained with Juan Francisco Rosa. "Do you know Francisco Fabelo?" the lawyer of the popular accusation began by asking him. "Yes. Very well, in addition," replied the former president, who stressed that "fortunately" Fabelo held several councilorships under his government. However, cwhen he was then asked if he knows what his employment relationship with Rosa is, his answers were "no" and "not exactly."
Next, he added that he "knows" that "now he is not" the manager of Finca de Uga, but he answered "I don't know" when he was asked if he was while he was a councilor. In that mandate, San Ginés delegated to him not only the councilorships of Agriculture, Livestock, Economy and Economic Promotion, but also later that of the Environment, in addition to the representation of the Cabildo in several key bodies in terms of territorial and environmental policy, such as the Cotmac, the Apmun, the Standing Committee of the Board of Trustees of the Timanfaya National Park and the Island Board of Trustees of Protected Spaces.
Precisely because of the positions that Fabelo held in the Cabildo and because of his ties with Rosa, the prosecutor who handled the Stratvs case, Igancio Stampa, asked in 2014 that technicians attached to the Environmental Chamber Prosecutor's Office in Madrid, and not those of the Cabildo, carry out the report on the damage caused to the natural values of La Geria with the construction of Stratvs, to guarantee the "objectivity and impartiality" of the opinion, given that the Environment area depended on him.
"In my capacity as technician and head of the area, I felt damaged. And I also felt that the entire department had been offended", Fabelo maintained, referring to the complaint that Pedro San Ginés and he filed with the State Attorney General's Office. A complaint that they filed in the name of the Cabildo, but that they hid from the rest of the Corporation, and that was later "flatly rejected" by the Prosecutor's Office.
"I felt really bad"
"I felt really bad," Fabelo insisted, stating that he felt "questioned," as if he were "capable of influencing the technicians." And Pedro San Ginés has maintained the same, who has also been asked about that complaint. "I do remember that," said the former president, during an interrogation in which he answered "I don't remember" to most of the questions. However, in this case he stated that what he did not remember was the name of the prosecutor against whom he asked that "measures" be taken.
In addition to the fact that that complaint was filed "flatly" by the Prosecutor's Office, which endorsed the work that Stampa had been developing in the Stratvs case, the truth is that he was not the only one who questioned Fabelo's impartiality. The investigating judge also did so, when she accepted the prosecutor's request regarding the issuance of reports. In that order, the magistrate referred to Fabelo's "employment relationship" with Rosa, citing both the Spanish Television program - which had already been broadcast a year before - and the Stratvs website itself, where Francisco Fabelo was also named as "veterinarian and master cheesemaker."
Even, la magistrate stressed that the "public manifestations of the aforementioned councilor, in which he has included assessments on the legal situation of the Stratvs complex, were a notorious, known and ostensible fact." For this reason, she considered "the partiality of the report plausible", in case it had been commissioned to the Environment area of the Cabildo, so she concluded that the "impartiality" of the institution in this specific case "was in question."