One of the main defendants in the Unión case, Luis Lleó, has ratified his confession this Thursday before the Sixth Section of the Provincial Court of Las Palmas and has accepted an agreement with the Prosecutor's Office, by which he will be imposed a sentence of one and a half years in prison, as well as the obligation to pay a fine of 150,000 euros for a continued crime of bribery. In addition, to prove that he will respond to this sum, he has already presented guarantees and assets as a guarantee of payment.
The other defendant in this case, Fernando Becerra, had already acknowledged years ago that he acted as Lleó's intermediary in an attempted bribery and has also ratified his confession, accepting in his case a sentence of one year in prison and a fine of 100,000 euros.
Regarding the prison sentences, which could be avoided as they are less than two years, what has been established is that they will be replaced by the payment of another fine, so the amount they must pay will be higher. However, that sum must still be determined in the sentence execution phase, since the time they both spent in provisional prison at the beginning of the investigation of this case will have to be deducted, as well as the time they were subjected to precautionary measures such as the withdrawal of their passports. In the case of Lleó, after his arrest in 2009 he spent almost seven months in provisional prison, while Becerra served more than three months.
Change of strategy in the face of the imminence of the trial
The hearing held this Thursday in Gran Canaria was requested by Luis Lleó himself, who after spending a decade trying to overturn the investigation of the Unión case decided a month ago to confess his crimes. In this way he has avoided the holding of a trial that was already imminent, and that was going to be resolved with a popular jury.
In addition, he has also achieved a reduction in the penalty requested for him by the Prosecutor's Office, which was initially six years in prison, which is the maximum contemplated by the Penal Code for this crime. Now, that initial request has been reduced by applying the "late confession" as a mitigating factor, as well as undue delays. And it is that beyond the recognition of the facts, the delay in bringing the case to trial by the Provincial Court would have already reduced the sentence.
In fact, this is what has happened in other parts of the Unión case. In the case of the businessmen convicted of bribery and embezzlement of public funds in the last sentence, the penalties imposed by the Sixth Section of the Provincial Court did not exceed two years in prison in most cases, by applying, among other things, a reduction for undue delays. In this regard, the Chamber itself assumed responsibility for this delay in its sentence, since the Investigating Court closed that case in 2014 and it did not go to trial until 2018.
In the case of the Lleó case, the indictment even dated from 2013, so six years had passed since the investigation was closed and the trial had not yet been held. And although most of the delay has been caused by the cascade of appeals that the defendant was unsuccessfully presenting, when closing the agreement it is also recognized that there were a total of more than three years in which this case was paralyzed.
Lleó acknowledges that he had an agreement with the owners of illegal hotels
The case that has already been sentenced this Thursday -pending only that the magistrates put the ruling in writing - was the one that gave rise to the Unión case, when the then Minister of Territorial Policy of the Cabildo, Carlos Espino, denounced that the businessman Luis Lleó had offered him a bribe using Fernando Becerra as an intermediary, to try to unblock the construction of the Costa Roja plot, at the entrance of Playa Blanca.
With his confession, Lleó fully recognizes the facts related in the indictment of the Public Prosecutor's Office. In it, the Prosecutor's Office described up to three attempted bribes, which were recorded by the UCO after Espino's complaint. In the first, they offered him a commission of 400,000 euros, to be divided between Espino and Fernando Becerra, in exchange for the Cabildo withdrawing from the dispute that it had initiated against the illegal license granted by the former mayor of Yaiza, José Francisco Reyes, to build "a macro-urbanization of 1,012 homes, 220 commercial premises and 2,559 parking spaces" on the Costa Roja plot.
In the second, the offer rose to 600,000 euros, and what Lleó was asking for then is that the Special Territorial Plan for Insular Tourist Planning that was being developed at that time, included the Costa Roja land as developable land.
Finally, Becerra conveyed a final proposal to Espino, which included not only the development of Costa Roja, but also the regularization of the illegal hotels of other promoters such as Juan Francisco Rosa. In this regard, what Lleó has now admitted is that he had "an agreement with the owners" of those hotels, who would give money to Lleó for pieces of land in Costa Roja. Afterwards, "they would make those plots available to the Cabildo free of charge", as alleged compensation for the legalization of their establishments. In exchange, they promised Espino not only the 600,000 euros to be divided with Fernando Becerra, but also "a percentage of the price of each of the sales that Luis Lleó made to the owners of the illegal hotels in Yaiza".
