The former bankruptcy administrator of Inalsa, Pedro Martín Toledo, will have to testify next Friday, September 23, as an investigated party, for alleged crimes of document forgery and contribution to a judicial proceeding, as well as for procedural fraud, in court number two of Arrecife.
All of this within the framework of the San Ginés case, in which the irregular hiring of Ignacio Calatayud, lawyer and close friend of the former president of the Cabildo, for one and a half million euros in the Inalsa bankruptcy proceedings is being investigated. It should be remembered that this contest ended with the privatization of water in Lanzarote and the arrival of Canal Gestión to the island.
Martín Toledo was until April 2013 one of the three bankruptcy administrators of the public water company Inalsa, which hired the lawyer Ignacio Calatayud during the presidency of San Ginés. Years later, once San Ginés lost the presidency of the Cabildo, Calatayud intended to collect another 82 thousand euros in fees, through new court costs, a claim that was dismissed by the Commercial Court. As justification for the collection of said costs, Calatayud provided a certificate from the now accused Pedro Martín. This attempted collection was what later served to uncover the entire case.
According to the Water Consortium, which reported the case, the document signed by Pedro Martín Toledo contains statements about the alleged agreements reached with Calatayud for the latter to pocket the procedural costs in favor of Inalsa in the bankruptcy incidents. The certificate included an alleged agreement that would enable Calatayud to participate in the judicial incidents of the public water company, so that he would collect the assessment of court costs in each incident.
"Multiple contradictions that lead to the indictment of Martín Toledo"
The complainants emphasize the fact that Martín Toledo certified in writing that Ignacio Calatayud had the right to pocket one and a half million euros in court costs, in the different incidents, when these are subsequent to his dismissal as administrator of Inalsa, in April 2013. It should be remembered that he signs and contributes the document seven years after he had no responsibilities in the public company. Furthermore, in all the incidents that allowed the millionaire income of the lawyer and friend of the president, the settlement of costs always occurred after the termination of the bankruptcy administration, a circumstance that would prevent knowledge of what he later certified, according to the complainant.
The credibility of the content of the certificate issued by Pedro Martín is discredited, according to the complainant, by the document signed jointly by the other two judicial administrators, which they presented in the Commercial Court on April 1, 2011, in which they stated, with respect to the hiring of Calatayud, that "this bankruptcy administration limited itself to supervising the fees agreed between the legal representation of the bankrupt party and the lawyer."
Another aspect highlighted in the complainant's document is that this certificate covers collections in the Water Consortium, an entity in which Pedro Martín himself never had responsibilities since it was never in bankruptcy proceedings. Therefore, according to sources from the prosecution, it is impossible for a bankruptcy administrator of Inalsa to cover payments in any other public institution or company other than Inalsa itself.
The indictment of Pedro Martín and his statement, scheduled for this Friday, is significant due to the role that the bankruptcy administration would have played in this procedure. Not in vain, the former president of the Cabildo of Lanzarote, Pedro San Ginés, has relied on various public statements in the Bankruptcy Administration for the hiring of Calatayud, arguing that it was the bankruptcy administrators who negotiated and agreed that Calatayud would keep all the costs in favor of Inalsa and the Consortium. The Consortium, however, maintains that said payments were made without the knowledge or consent of its clients and without any document to prove it.
