The investigation of the well-known Pedro San Ginés Case continues to advance in the Court of Instruction Number 2 of Arrecife, following the legal actions undertaken by the Insular Water Consortium and the public company Insular de Aguas de Lanzarote (INALSA) in March of last year.
Thus, according to the order of commencement, the crimes initially imputed to the former president of the Cabildo, Pedro San Ginés, are specified in prevarication, embezzlement, fraud against the administration, document forgery, bribery and money laundering, which extend to professional disloyalty in the case of Calatayud.
However, the most striking aspect of this provisional qualification made by the magistrate is the inclusion of the crime of "belonging to a criminal group or organization". A crime that, according to the Penal Code, implies "the grouping formed by more than two people with a stable character or for an indefinite time, who in a concerted and coordinated manner distribute various tasks or functions in order to commit crimes."
The "criminal organization" would be composed, according to the order of commencement, by Pedro San Ginés, Ignacio Calatayud, Juana Fernández de las Heras, wife of Calatayud and daughter of the controversial lawyer Felipe Fernández Camero, an essential and habitual piece in the largest corruption cases revealed in Lanzarote.
The accredited presence in the case and the relevant role of the members of the family clan led by Fernández Camero has even led to the imputation in the case as a legal entity of his company Adelfas 24 S.L. A company well known in the judicial and political world of the island, as it is the company with which Camero billed more than one million euros to the Yaiza City Council, for its urban planning advice in the disputes that faced the southern city council with the Cabildo. Adelfas 24 was the company that invoiced and charged the Arrecife City Council a strongly questioned fee corresponding to the failed defense of the city council in the well-known Ginory Case.
It is, precisely, the consideration as a criminal organization of the investigated persons that justified the tracing of accounts ordered by the instructor and the search carried out in their homes on March 28, considering the investigators that "the criminal network object of the present case was designed and participated by persons with diverse technical knowledge, as they hold the condition of lawyers and presidents of corporations and local entities, which allows inferring that the data found so far do not reflect the totality of the facts, whose reconstruction is intended by the criminal investigation and may have been hidden to avoid any type of verification by the courts."
Regarding Adelfas 24 S.L., it stated that "it was used by the family criminal network linked to it to make effective the delivery of a property to the investigated Pedro San Ginés Gutiérrez." The judge was referring to the house in which San Ginés has resided for more than a decade, and which still appears in the name of Adelfas 24 in the Land Registry.
The black payment of San Ginés' chalet
The investigation of the transfer of this house to San Ginés constitutes a central element of the ECO's inquiries, since all the data obtained point to the fact that the payments made by San Ginés are well below the real price that it would reach in the market.
In that sense, the declaration of San Ginés recognizing having paid almost one hundred thousand euros in cash is contemplated by the investigators as an attempt to elude the accusation of bribery. An attempt that seems doomed to failure since the representative of Adelfas 24, Felipe Fernández Camero, refused to confirm it in his appearance before the instructor.
Greater difficulty for San Ginés is posed by the voluntary declaration of Juana Fernández de las Heras, who as attorney of the mercantile company signed several of the contracts referring to the house, who spontaneously stated before questions from the agents of the Central Operative Unit (UCO) of the Civil Guard, that the price was "approximately 270,000 euros" and that "all payments were made by bank transfers, and that it is recorded in the annual accounts of the mercantile company", a declaration that denies the supposed confession of San Ginés.
Start of the investigation
The complaint was filed after the administration of the Water Consortium detected the misappropriation by Ignacio Calatayud of court costs belonging to both entities for an amount exceeding 800,000 euros. This circumstance was brought to the attention of the Assembly of the Consortium and INALSA, which agreed to initiate criminal actions to recover the public funds stolen from both entities, taking advantage of the incidental procedures that surrounded the bankruptcy proceedings in which INALSA was immersed.
Calatayud, who was starting in those years in the exercise of law as an independent professional, lacking therefore accredited experience or specialization that could justify his election, was hired by Pedro San Ginés irregularly and with no more merits than the intense friendship he had with who was at that time president of the Cabildo and of the injured public entities.
This relationship, which to the extent that it was becoming public and notorious came to be publicly recognized by San Ginés without, paradoxically, abstaining from the contracts in favor of his friend, has been accredited by the investigators who have had access, after the intervention of several electronic devices, to numerous images that demonstrate the intensity of that link as they collect moments of special intimacy, shared trips and private celebrations.
Throughout the investigation, which has involved a year and a half of different inquiries by the Organized Crime Team (ECO) of the Civil Guard, it has been proven that the appropriation of these costs, belonging to both public entities, was carried out with full knowledge and with the complicity of Pedro San Ginés, who complemented those emoluments with different assignments that meant for his intimate lawyer an income for an amount of more than 1,500,000 euros.
In addition, the investigation tries to prove, beyond the role of facilitator played by San Ginés, the possible commission of a crime of bribery, since from the investigations carried out it seems to emerge that San Ginés could have received part of the allegedly embezzled money, being assisted by Calatayud and his family environment to launder that money.
