"First of all, I don't even know what I'm accused of. I have no idea of the accusation against me. I imagine it will be for the building permit, but I am not a technician or a lawyer. I leave the decision to be made in the hands of your honors." These were the only words of the former mayor of Yaiza, José Francisco Reyes, when it was his turn to testify as a defendant in the Stratvs case trial. He then refused to respond not only to the popular accusation - as the other six defendants who testified this Wednesday have also done - but also to the Prosecutor's Office. In fact, Reyes did not even answer questions from his own lawyer, who was assigned to him by the public defender's office and who explained on the first day that she had recently taken over his defense.
"Do you want the indictment to be read to you?", the president of the Chamber, Emilio Moya, asked him. "I imagine it's for the license", Reyes repeated. "I ask you because it surprises me that you say you don't know what you are accused of," the magistrate insisted. "I was only summoned to come here. Nothing else was given to me," replied the former mayor, who already has several convictions behind him - including one for the first trial of the Stratvs case - and who is currently in prison serving a sentence for the Yate case.
"Over these years I say that you must have had some notification," the magistrate replied, referring to the time that the investigation of the Stratvs case has lasted, in which he has changed his defense. Then, despite questioning Reyes' statements, and to ensure that no right was being violated, he asked the prosecutor to read the part of the indictment that relates the facts imputed to him. After listening to it, the former mayor began to speak again: "I have signed those licenses...", he began to say, before the president of the Chamber interrupted him. "You have already had a trial before. You know how it goes. They ask you and if you want to answer and if you don't want to, you don't answer," he reminded him, insisting that he clarify whether he was going to answer questions or invoke his right not to testify.
"If you want to ask me something, yes," he replied. "Not me, but the prosecutor sure will," replied the magistrate of the Chamber, who only asks questions in rare exceptions and always at the end of the interrogations, if they consider it necessary to add any clarification on what has been exposed. Finally, after an atypical scene, it was Reyes' public defender who intervened to settle the moment and explain that what her client wanted was to invoke his right not to testify.
The former Urban Planning Councilor says that he only "corrected an error"
The next to testify was the former Urban Planning Councilor of Yaiza, José Antonio Rodríguez, who also refused to answer the Prosecutor's Office and the popular accusation, although he did answer questions from his lawyer. Rodríguez was also already convicted of prevarication in the first Stratvs trial, which focused on the granting of the activity license, already under the Mayoralty of Gladys Acuña, and also on the inactivity of the City Council to close the winery and the rest of the facilities despite having knowledge of its illegality.
Now, in this second trial, the former councilor must answer for previous events, when he governed with José Francisco Reyes and the construction of the winery was authorized. During the brief interrogation, in which he only answered his lawyer, she mainly asked him closed questions - such as "Did you know that there was a prior authorization from the Government of the Canary Islands"? -, and most were answered with "yes" or "no".
As for the intervention that this defendant had in the granting of the building permit, it is actually focused on a later decree, which he signed as acting mayor. In that decree, the word "winery" was introduced for the first time, since until that moment the permit and the extensions that Reyes had authorized spoke of the construction of a warehouse.
"There was an omission and it had to be corrected", "it was to correct an error, because they forgot in the first decree to put that it was for a winery", he defended, despite the fact that the Prosecutor's Office considers in its writing that this nuance was essential, since the planning did not allow the construction of an industrial winery. In this regard, the former councilor referred to the prior authorization that had been issued by the Canarian Government, which did refer to a winery, although the technicians of the regional Executive themselves had specified before that nothing has to do with that authorization with the subsequent building permit that must be granted by the City Council, where other parameters must be analyzed to see if it complies with the specific regulations.
In addition, José Antonio Rodríguez's lawyer also asked him what relationship he has with Rosa, to which he replied "none"; and if he has received any "gift or offer" from the businessman, to which he replied "no".
"Type reports" to authorize licenses
The third defendant on behalf of the Yaiza City Council to testify this Wednesday was the one who was a building surveyor in the City Council, Pablo Carrasco, who had to leave the position after being sentenced to five years of disqualification for urban planning prevarication in another previous case. In his statement, Carrasco did respond to the Prosecutor's Office - although not to the popular accusation - and defended that when he reported in favor of the license in 1999 he limited himself to verifying that the project conformed to the General Plan because his superiors told him to do so.
In addition, he has repeated on several occasions that he is "technical" and not "legal" and has also assured that he was unaware of a report that had been issued by the secretary of the City Council, where it was warned that it was necessary to request the territorial qualification before granting the license. "I analyzed what the head of the Technical Office gave me," he defended. Before, he had stressed that he did not have specific training for that position in the administration and that he usually only reported on license applications in urban land and not in rural land, because those were handled by the head of the Office, although in this case they asked him to do it. And that he did it as with the rest, with "type reports" that they gave him.
In addition, he has emphasized that the project already came with an authorization from the Government of the Canary Islands. "I understood that he had given the green light," he added, despite the fact that they are independent procedures.
Approved the execution project with the license expired
Regarding his second intervention in this file, when in 2005 he reported on the execution project, the prosecutor has stressed that the license had then already expired, since by law they expire after two years. "At that time I did not know. Now I have seen some things of the procedure that might not be in accordance, but at that time I did not have so much knowledge," he replied.
The license granted in 1999 established a period of six months to start the works, but these did not start until 2003, when that license had already expired. In addition, the execution project was not presented until two years after the works started, in 2005, when these had to be stopped by the City Council. That was where Carrasco's favorable report to the execution project arrived, despite the fact that the license was expired and despite the fact that what had already been executed for two years had nothing to do with that project.
However, the building surveyor has stated that he did not go to see the works because they did not order him to do so, and he did not visit them to prepare the provisional settlement of the taxes that Rosa had to pay for that license. For that settlement, the popular accusation imputes a second crime to Carrasco, since it considers that there was a fraud to the administration, which charged much less than what corresponded for what had really been built. In this regard, Pablo Carrasco has stated that "it did not even correspond" to him to make that settlement and that it was also only a provisional settlement.
"The definitive one is the one that was made with the final work certificate," he defended, explaining that it is there when "it is verified that it complies with the license". However, he insisted that since it was a provisional settlement he did not do that verification because he only did it if "the mayor or the auditor ordered it". Regarding the secretary auditor, Vicente Bartolomé Fuentes, he has also made other references in his statement. "I believed that the secretary was the one who ordered the file. I believed it. Later, with the passage of the years, what has happened has happened," he added, referring to the convictions that Bartolomé Fuentes also already has behind him, including one in the first trial of the Stratvs case. In this second piece, the former secretary would also have had to sit on the bench, but an error in the summons - having separated the case into two pieces after the presentation of the indictments -, has finally freed him from sitting on the bench in this new trial.
