The councilors of Lanzarote en Pie-Sí Podemos in the Cabildo, Jorge Peñas and Myriam Barros, have registered this Wednesday, before the Provincial Prosecutor's Office of Las Palmas, their announced complaint against Echedey Eugenio for the 640,000 euros that the Tourist Centers paid to Lanzarote Bus without a contract and without bidding for the Timanfaya bus service, during his time as president of the Board of Directors of the entity.
Specifically, the councilors of the purple formation consider that the nationalist could have incurred in a crime of prevarication for the payments to this company, of which Echedey Eugenio himself acknowledged being a worker on leave.
And, although the nationalist responded to Podemos' accusations by clinging to the fact that he was not a "contracting body", the EPEL's statutes establish that among the functions of the president of the Board of Directors is to exercise inspection of all the entity's services and the monitoring of the development of its activity and the ordering of payments within the legal and regulatory deadlines.
Thus, although Echedey Eugenio also stated that he was unaware of the economic "volume" and the amount that the company was charging, Podemos considers that, as a consequence of his functions, he should be "perfectly aware" of these payments and that "the provision of these transport services had been carried out in violation of the regulations on public procurement." And, the previous government of CC not only directly awarded the service, but did not even ask for quotes from other companies.
Lorenzo's attempt to initiate the bidding one day before being dismissed
Lanzarote Bus began renting buses for the Centers in 2011 but, when Ástrid Pérez was CEO, quotes were requested from three companies and a minor contract was signed, as it was an amount of just over 10,000 euros to replace a bus for a month while an breakdown was repaired.
Similar sums were paid in the following years, until Eugenio's arrival at the Centers, when Lanzarote Bus went on to charge 41,613 euros in 2015; 100,348 euros in 2016; 97,479 euros in 2017; 150,491 euros in 2018 and 249,987 euros in 2019.
Only one day before being removed from office and when CC was already out of the Cabildo government, the former CEO of the Tourist Centers, José Juan Lorenzo, issued a needs report to initiate the bidding for the rental of buses for Montañas de Fuego, thus trying to regularize the service.
In said report, Lorenzo established a budget of more than 433,000 euros per year, which was rejected as it was considered an "exorbitant" amount. In fact, with the new government group, which put the service out to tender, it has been awarded to Bus Leader for 206,021.73 euros, which is 43,000 euros less than what Lanzarote Bus charged in 2019 and less than half the amount budgeted by José Juan Lorenzo.
