Former auditor Carlos Sáenz will return to the dock next week with a new request for six years in prison for another alleged embezzlement in the San Bartolomé City Council with the fraudulent payment of almost 600,000 euros between 2004 and 2007. The former PP councilor Pedro Reyes and businessman José Daniel Hernández, who was already convicted together with Sáenz in a piece of the Unión case, for charging invoices for services not provided by the Arrecife City Council, are also accused in the case.
In this new case initiated years ago and which will now go to trial, the Prosecutor's Office requests that the three be convicted of crimes of prevarication, falsification of a commercial document, fraud and embezzlement of public funds. For both Sáenz and Pedro Reyes, it requests six years in prison and ten years of disqualification, while for the businessman it requests five years and six months in prison and nine years of disqualification.
In its indictment, the Prosecutor's Office maintains that the three defendants agreed and "devised a plan that aimed at the arbitrary plundering of funds from the San Bartolomé City Council", so that José Daniel Hernández "obtained an illicit patrimonial enrichment". To do this, they "created the appearance that certain lighting and other electricity services were going to be provided in the municipality of San Bartolomé, knowing that on many occasions, such services were not going to be executed".
"Multiple files" to create "the fiction of direct award"
The facts are almost identical to those already judged in piece number 13 of the Unión case, but in that case focused on Arrecife. In that piece, both Sáenz and José Daniel Hernández, as well as the former Finance Councilor José Miguel Rodríguez and the head of the Technical Office of the capital, Rafael Arrocha, were convicted of the embezzlement of a quarter of a million euros.
In San Bartolomé, where Carlos Sáenz was also an auditor, Hernández came to collect 582,813 euros through one of his companies, Proyectos y Servicios de Lanzarote, "totally and absolutely disregarding the rules that regulated the public procurement procedure" and "under the guise of multiple files". In them, according to the Prosecutor's Office, "the fiction of direct award by minor contract was created", when the truth is that the amount prevented resorting to that procedure and forced it to be put out to tender.
Furthermore, of the 36 files that were processed, the Prosecutor's Office maintains that "at least in 13 of them the work was not carried out or the service object of the contract was not provided". In this way, it considers it proven that at least 155,061 euros were paid without the City Council obtaining any consideration, so that is the amount that it claims that the three defendants return jointly and severally to the Corporation.
Payments "simulating that the service or work had been performed"
"The defendant José Daniel Hernández Arráez presented to the municipal intervention the invoices corresponding to the alleged services provided, describing in each of them the service provided or the work carried out and the amount that should be paid to him, despite knowing that said invoices did not respond to any contract and that in certain cases the work described had not been executed at any time", states the indictment.
Regarding Pedro Reyes, he points out that he signed the conformity of 17 of those invoices as Councilor for Public Services, "despite having knowledge of their mendacity, assuming the expense and simulating that the contracting file was valid and that the service or work had been performed under the agreed conditions".
Finally, as auditor, Carlos Sáenz "proceeded to arbitrarily authorize the expense consigned in each of the invoices, recognizing the obligation of payment by the City Council, knowing that, on many occasions, the services described had not been provided and that his procedure was totally incompatible with the administrative regulations of applicable public procurement".
Another looting already condemned and with confessions
In addition to the convictions and trials that he still has pending in the Unión case for embezzling public funds from Arrecife, Carlos Sáenz had also been convicted of another looting in San Bartolomé, within the first piece that has gone to trial in the Montecarlo case. In that piece, both he and the rest of the defendants recognized the facts and accepted the penalties requested for them by the Prosecutor's Office, after reaching an agreement of conformity.
That ruling, which is already final, sentenced the former auditor to three years in prison; two and a half years to businessman José Vicente Montesinos and one year in prison to the treasurer, Luis Manuel Rodríguez, the former mayor of CC, Miguel Martín, and the former Finance Councilor for the PP, Javier Betancort, for authorizing payments for services not provided to Montesinos' companies.
In its proven facts, which were recognized by the defendants, the ruling indicates that between the five contributed to embezzling a total of more than 470,000 euros between 2002 and 2012, each from the position they held in the Corporation. In that case, another former PP councilor, Cándido Reguera, was also accused, but he did not go to trial since he died during the investigation. Reguera was Finance Councilor in San Bartolomé and later mayor of Arrecife, in a period for which he was also accused in other pieces of Montecarlo together with Carlos Sáenz and Javier Betancort.
