The former secretary of the Arrecife City Council Felipe Fernández Camero appeared this Friday before the Second Section of the Provincial Court as an accused. Camero is accused of the crimes of illicit association, bribery, disclosure of secrets and forgery of a public document. For him, the Prosecutor's Office is asking for a sentence of eleven and a half years in prison.
In the first session, the head of the Technical Office of the Arrecife City Council during that stage, the also accused Rafael Arrocha, had involved him in rigging the cleaning tender in the capital. He said that it was the then secretary who provided him with the documentation with the offers from the bidding companies before the opening of envelopes in a public act. This is how this technician, always according to his version, realized that Urbaser (then Tecmed) was not the best positioned to be awarded the contract and the "switch" could be carried out, which consisted of incorporating free improvements into the company's offer that would make it surpass its competitor. All this, he said, following instructions from the mayor.
"The head of the Technical Office said nothing but lies, induced lies, in addition," responded Fernández Camero this Friday in an extensive appearance that has lasted more than two hours. The former secretary has defended that it was "impossible" to manipulate the offers before the opening of the envelopes because the envelopes were sealed and it would have been noticed and because the documentation was so voluminous that it could not have been transported. He denied that it was his responsibility to keep those documents submitted by the bidders and, after a long diatribe with the prosecutor, he defended that this task corresponded to the officials of the registry of entry (which depended organically on his secretariat) in the first instance and, subsequently, to the contracting table, of which he was a member, but not secretary.
The prosecutor Javier Ródenas reminded him that during his statement in the investigation phase he stated that since the offers from the companies came in, the custody corresponded to the secretary. "It is an unfounded assessment. It would be a slip on my part, but it is easy. You take the law and read it," Fernández Camero replied.
According to the accused, the alteration of the offers could only occur after the public act of opening envelopes and, therefore, he has accused Rafael Arrocha of rigging, recalling that this technician took "two months" to prepare the report-proposal for awarding the contract to Tecmed. "It is impossible to review all the documentation in two days," he said to try to dismantle the thesis according to which the switch occurred between May 14 and 22, 2002.
Fernández Camero admitted that Urbaser paid for some of his trips to Madrid, but justified it by stating that they were work days in which he attended as a representative of the City Council, which was the work that was entrusted to him from the Consistory, which at that time was not aware of who was paying the bills and that, in addition, in the improvements incorporated by the company in the offer for the cleaning contract, an amount was reserved for the attendance of politicians and officials at fairs and congresses.
