“For me, he did a good job.” “It was money well spent, and I still think so.” This is how the former mayor of Yaiza, José Francisco Reyes, defended this Wednesday the payments he authorized to the lawyer Felipe Fernández Camero, which amounted to almost one million euros without any contracting files, prior budgets, or reports accrediting the provision of the service afterwards.
“Of course I knew the work had been done,” he replied to his lawyer, when he asked him about the payment orders he signed. To do so, the only document the then mayor had was the invoices submitted by Camero himself, which in some cases amounted to about 100,000 euros each (16 million pesetas at the time).
Reyes was the first defendant to testify during the trial for the alleged plundering of public funds from Yaiza with these payments, although he refused to answer the lawyer of the popular accusation and also the Prosecutor's Office, which is represented in the hearing by two prosecutors. They wanted to record the questions they intended to ask, handing them over to the Court in writing.
Regarding the defenses, all have waived the right to question Reyes, who has only responded to his own lawyer, Pablo Luna, an expert lawyer in corruption cases who intervened, among others, in the Malaya case.
From 50,000 pesetas per month to 46 million in one month
During the interrogation of his client, the lawyer referred to a plenary agreement from 42 years ago, long before Reyes' mandate began, to which the defenses have been referring since the beginning of the trial, to argue that Camero's hiring dates back many years.
In that Yaiza Plenary of 1980, under the Mayoralty of Honorio García Bravo, they argue that it was agreed to hire Felipe Fernández Camero as advisor to the City Council on legal matters. The amount agreed, according to the defenses themselves, was “50,000 pesetas per month” (about 300 euros).
Appealing to that agreement, Reyes has defended that he “did not intervene in the hiring” and that this lawyer, along with three others who were working for the City Council at that time, had already been providing their services previously when he acceded to the Mayoralty in 1996.
However -even if that agreement were taken as a good thing as an indefinite hiring for decades, which the experts have refuted-, he has not explained how it went from those 50,000 pesetas per month to making millionaire payments every month to this lawyer under his mandate. Only in December 2015, Reyes authorized the payment of three invoices to Camero of between 82,000 and 98,000 euros each (equivalent in total to about 46 million pesetas in one month).
In addition, by not admitting questions from the Prosecutor's Office, he has not clarified why Camero charged monthly for advising the Council, and then invoiced separately for representation in lawsuits, nor how these services were awarded to him, nor who supervised the fees.
“When they gave me the invoices, I signed them and that's it,” Reyes replied, when his lawyer asked him if he received “any perk” from Camero or if he kept a part of the payment of those sums.
Saturdays at the City Council
The rest of the brief interrogation by his lawyer has focused on whether he received any warning that he “should modify that hiring” to Felipe Fernández Camero, to which he has repeatedly replied no.
“No councilor of the opposition ever said anything. They seemed fine with it. They also consulted him about something,” he has even assured.
Regarding the lawsuits in which Camero intervened, he has not been able to specify it. “One hundred or more,” he added. However, he did want to mention one in particular, according to him “with a bank” that “claimed more than a billion pesetas.” Both he and his lawyer have then increased that figure, concluding that the City Council “saved more than 2,000 million pesetas” with that case.
“If those lawsuits that he took had been taken by someone else, I am sure it would have cost twice as much,” Reyes assured. “Didn't he charge for some?” his lawyer asked him. “I wouldn't be surprised, because he never demanded that the City Council pay. In that one he was even years without charging,” he replied. “At least a year without charging anything,” he added right after.
In addition, he has insisted that before the year 83, when he joined the City Council as a councilor, Fernández Camero was already an advisor and he has stated that he went to the Council “almost every Saturday”. It should be remembered that Camero was also the secretary of the Arrecife City Council, so the prosecution and the official experts argue that there was also an incompatibility for his hiring.
He ended up being removed from his position in Arrecife by the Public Function, which sanctioned him for a serious and a very serious offense, for having held positions in two companies while serving as secretary.
Return to a paid lawyer
In his first criminal cases, José Francisco Reyes also had Camero himself as his personal lawyer, until they ended up being charged together in the Yate case. In that procedure, the lawyer was pointed out as the instigator of Reyes' criminal conduct. Afterwards, as it was not possible to prove that advice, this new piece was opened accusing both of embezzlement, for the money he received from the City Council without finding any trace of his advisory work.
After his arrest during the instruction of Yate, the former mayor confessed to receiving bribes in exchange for the granting of illegal licenses, and even gave several names, although he later retracted that first confession. Just at that moment, in 2009, Pablo Luna began to practice as his lawyer for the first time, who was the one who presented that writing of Reyes retracting.
Later, both in Yate and in other trials he has faced, and to which he went with public defenders, José Francisco Reyes ended up accepting agreements of conformity and confessing. However, when he became involved in other cases together with investigated people such as Camero and Juan Francisco Rosa, he returned to paid lawyers and to having the services of Pablo Luna.
After his statement, Reyes has been authorized to leave the room, as he had also done on the first day, after alleging health problems. In fact, today he has come only to testify, and he has been exempted from attending the rest of the trial, for which he has expressly waived his right to the last word.
Regarding the other three defendants, they are scheduled to testify this Thursday, on the third day of the trial, which will be held in Gran Canaria.
