The first day of the Stratvs case trial has come to an end after a quick round of statements from the accused, as almost all of them have refused to respond to the Public Prosecutor's Office and the private and popular accusations. Just as the former mayor of Yaiza, José Francisco Reyes, began doing, the current mayor and all the members of the Governing Board who authorized the Stratvs activity license have invoked their right not to testify and have only answered questions from their own lawyers.
Thus, both Gladys Acuña and former councilors Leonardo Rodríguez, Evaristo García, and Juan Lorenzo Tavío Santana have focused their statements on talking about the positive reports that were in the file, but have not given an explanation about the negative opinions that also existed when they granted that permit, as the prosecutor had previously emphasized.
In addition, the four have agreed to point to the former secretary of Yaiza, Vicente Bartolomé Fuentes, as responsible for conveying the information in the file to them during the Governing Board meeting in which the activity license was granted, in the year 2008. "The secretary said that he had all the approvals", "I trusted in the good work of the secretary", Evaristo García maintained, with a message that the other members of the Governing Board later repeated, thus pointing to another of the accused sitting on the bench.
"That handwriting is not mine, I have not seen any reports"
"There was not a single unfavorable report, they were all favorable", former councilor Lorenzo Tavío Santana stated, also agreeing that they trusted "the municipal technicians and the secretary". However, during the first day of the trial, several reports that were in the file and were negative were presented. Even the cover of the file itself referred to one of them, within a list where some of the documents it contained were listed.
"This handwriting is certainly not mine. I have not seen any reports", the former secretary responded, who, along with another technician from Yaiza, Andrés Morales, and one from the Cabildo, Manuel Jesús Spínola, were the only ones to answer the prosecutor's questions. In his statement, despite being the secretary of the City Council at the time, Bartolomé Fuentes defended that he did not know the entire file, that he was not in charge of "custodying" it, and that he only saw positive reports. "Why didn't you see the rest?", prosecutor Stampa asked him after showing him those documents. "I don't know", the accused replied.
Regarding the cover where one of those opinions appeared, specifically as "negative health report", the prosecutor had him read it during the hearing, and what Bartolomé Fuentes read aloud was "health headquarters report". "It says negative report there. Do you read health headquarters report?", the representative of the Public Prosecutor's Office emphasized.
"One regrets not having done things that would have exonerated him"
"This former official who is speaking to you was not the one who opened the folder and examined the documents", the former secretary added later, when the president of the Chamber intervened to ask him to answer "a very specific question" from the prosecutor, about whether he warned the councilors who were part of the Governing Board that there was a negative report from Health.
Regarding who was in charge then of reviewing those reports and conveying their content to the councilors, Bartolomé Fuentes replied that "the technician", although he did not specify his identity. And he also could not explain why the name of that technician does not appear in the minutes of the meeting. "Because of the certainty that nothing was going to happen. And then one regrets not having done things that would have exonerated him from responsibility", the former secretary added.
Both he and the mayor and the councilors referred to the presence of that "technician", although none of them named him. However, they did so during their statement in the investigation phase, with almost all of them stating that the head of the Technical Office, Antonio Lorenzo, attended the meeting. However, he provided a certificate at the time proving that he was on vacation on that date. For this reason, during the trial, almost all of them have changed their statement, stating that the municipal architect and "the Classified Activities technician" attended that session.
"One does not sit there like a sheep"
For his part, the former secretary stated that the councilors had "the files at their disposal" to be able to consult them, as stated in the call for the meeting. "One does not sit there like a sheep", the mayor pointed out on this point, after responding to her lawyer that she "did not read the reports in their entirety", but that at the Board the technician gave them an explanation "in a superficial way".
Regarding the role of Bartolomé Fuentes, he pointed out that he was in charge of "reviewing" the file when the Council "understood that it was complete" and passed it to the Secretariat, before taking it to the Governing Board. "I was not warned by anyone. If I had had the slightest doubt, it would have remained on the table. And if there had been any negative report, it would have been voted against", the mayor assured.
His then government partner, Leonardo Rodríguez, who as a lawyer has decided to exercise his defense and has sat next to the rest of the lawyers and not on the bench with the other nine defendants, has spoken along the same lines. In his statement, Rodríguez assured that they did not know the file until the moment the Board was held. And according to him, "all the reports, in a forceful way, reported favorably", so they saw "no reason to vote against". "They did not tell us verbally, we had visual access to the reports", the former councilor affirmed, despite the fact that during the hearing different negative reports that were part of the file have been shown, and about which neither the former councilors nor the mayor have wanted to respond to the Public Prosecutor's Office or the other accusations.
