The lawyer Ignacio Calatayud, charged in the San Ginés case, wants to change judges, as reported by the digital Canarias Ahora. The lawyer requested before the Court the change of magistrate through an appeal. He did so after the judge dismissed, in July, his request to dismiss the case.
In this case, Calatayud shares charges with the former president of the Cabildo of Lanzarote, Pedro San Ginés (Coalición Canaria), current spokesperson for the nationalist group, Juana María Fernández and the company "Adelfas 24 SL". Calatayud is being investigated for an alleged crime of misappropriation of more than 1,800,000 euros from public funds.
Meanwhile, the lawyer insists that these payments were already investigated by the presiding judge of the Court of Instruction number four of Arrecife, Ricardo Fiestras, and therefore requests its closure. However, the Court of Las Palmas has confirmed in several recent orders that it sees indications of a crime that support the investigation, as reported this Tuesday by the Efe Agency. Ricardo Fiestras filed in 2016, after two years of investigation, a case in which the lawyer Calatayud also remained under investigation, but it is not the one that remains open today.
The investigated insists that the investigating judge, the head of the Court of Instruction number two of Arrecife, Jerónimo Alonso, is not competent to investigate him. In that same appeal, Catalayud again requested the dismissal of the case and a change of judge. On this occasion, and according to Canarias Ahora, he has suggested that Fiestras be the one to lead the case and, to the detriment of this, he insists that it should be handled by the judge of Instruction number three of Arrecife, José Luis Ruiz. The latter was the body in which Pedro San Ginés filed a complaint against the president of the Cabildo of Lanzarote, the socialist Dolores Corujo, for slander and libel, when the corporation issued a press release in which it accused San Ginés of appropriating 800,000 public euros that allegedly came from payments of procedural costs.
The case investigates whether Pedro San Ginés and Calatayud acted in collusion for mutual benefit and the crimes of embezzlement and bribery are being considered in relation to the alleged payments that the lawyer would have received during the time that Pedro San Ginés was in charge of the Cabildo. Between 2009 and 2010, the lawyer had provided services to the public companies Inalsa and the Water Consortium of Lanzarote. Calatayud would have allegedly received money from public funds, taking advantage of his relationship with the then president of the Cabildo, and San Ginés could have benefited from a price reduction of the house in which he lives.
In the framework of the same case, this Monday, the former president of the Cabildo of Lanzarote, Pedro San Ginés, recovered his bank accounts, frozen for ten months. However, the real estate of the investigated remains seized.
