“Canal de Isabel II has been managed like a farm, at the whim of the person who entered there, and now our objective is to turn it into that company that should never have ceased to be.” This is how the deputy of Ciudadanos in the Assembly of Madrid, Juan Rubio, has summarized the steps they are taking in the investigation commission of which he is a part, and which aims to clarify what happened in this Madrid public company, immersed in a macro-judicial case for corruption. And among other things, Rubio has announced that this investigation will also reach Lanzarote, where Canal Isabel II currently manages the integral water cycle.
“We have already analyzed something and let's say that Canal Gestión Lanzarote is the advanced candidate to be included in the models we have detected,” the deputy, who already points out that there were “quite a few irregularities in the acquisition process” of Inalsa and also in the subsequent action of Canal on the island, “with potential cost overruns in more than one investment”, said on Radio Lanzarote-Onda Cero. Some “cost overruns” that he claims to have already “identified”, although for now he cannot give “concrete evidence”.
According to the Madrid deputy, the commission's investigation is currently focused on Canal Isabel II's 'investments' in Latin America, which is where they began to detect irregularities and where Justice has also arrived, with the arrest of several company executives and public officials from the Community of Madrid. But afterwards, they will continue to analyze the actions in each place where the company was expanding, including Lanzarote, where he claims that they have already “discovered another series of quite common practices, by which costs were increased, mainly construction costs”. These practices, according to Rubio, point to the repetition of the “major lines of investigation” that they already have open: “the big score, the purchases and acquisitions and the trickle of small scores”.
“A modus operandi” that has also “led them to Inalsa”
The Ciudadanos deputy has also denounced the difficulties they are encountering in accessing all of Canal's documentation, pointing out, among other things, that the commission has “47 requests for information, so far denied”. However, he affirms that despite this they have already managed to detect “a procedure, a modus operandi” that has also “led them to Inasa”. According to Juan Rubio, there is “a practically identical procedure, in which there are a series of shell companies established ad hoc to carry out the purchase function”, which would be that “big score”, and subsequently supposedly inflated works and other alleged “small scores”.
In the case of Madrid, he pointed out that they have “at least 4 mega treatment plants that are around 4-5%”, which he emphasizes are “absolutely ridiculous investments, and that are coincidentally very close to private golf courses that we are irrigating with drinking water”. And to this, according to the deputy, are added the alleged irregularities in the execution of works, “from the installation in which to assume, sign, certify works that have not been carried out, to putting in more material than there already was and oversizing the structures”.
Regarding Lanzarote, he also pointed out that “part of the line of investigation” will focus on the “ease with which the Canal de Isabel II” committed to assuming Inalsa's debt” when it was awarded the management of the water cycle in Lanzarote. In this regard, he recalled that Operation Lezo, in which the former president of the Community of Madrid, Ignacio González, was arrested, among others, is investigating the acquisition of companies by Canal paying a price higher than their real value. And from these overprices, according to the investigation, funds were then diverted to the private accounts of the participants in the operation.
“We are not going to disappear suddenly from Lanzarote”
Juan Rubio has also referred to the intention of different opposition parties in the Madrid Assembly, including his own, for Canal Isabel II to abandon the businesses it has abroad and in other parts of Spain and “focus on what is the object of the company's business, which is the management of the integral water cycle in the Community of Madrid”.
However, although he stressed that “many millions of euros have been lost that, ultimately, should have reverted to the shareholders themselves, who are none other than the people of Madrid”, he also assured that Ciudadanos' proposal is that the withdrawal of these investments abroad should be done “in an orderly manner and in no case, of course, unilaterally breaking the contracts”.
“In this sense, the people of Lanzarote can rest assured that we are not going to disappear suddenly, at least, if it depends on Ciudadanos,” he assured. And it is that although he insists that the commitment that was signed in Lanzarote “is totally fraudulent and certainly not profitable for the citizens of Madrid”, he insisted that a “exit plan” and “divestment” will have to be established that provides “legal certainty”. And for this, one of the options he has pointed out is that a new company “remains responsible for the management of water in Lanzarote”, taking over the commitments that Canal Isabel II assumed at the time.
