The former president of the Cabildo, Pedro San Ginés, has managed to annul all statements made during the first day of the trial for the seizure of the Montaña Roja desalination plant and for the hearing to be suspended 'sine die', as it will now pass into the hands of the Provincial Court.
This had been requested this Tuesday by his defense, alleging that the magistrate of the Criminal Court Number 3 of Arrecife “is not competent” to hold that hearing, because the penalty requested exceeds ten years of conviction, in this case of disqualification. This argument, which had not been raised until now by his lawyers, despite the fact that the requested penalty has been known since July 2018, is the one they have brandished with the trial already begun. And above all, after a first day in which the statement of one of the accused had entered into frontal contradiction with San Ginés' line of defense.
After listening to the arguments of the lawyer José María Calero, who is defending the former president and has intervened in some of the best-known corruption cases in Spain, the magistrate began by pointing out that the hearing would continue. However, the lawyer then warned her with taking legal action against her, insisting that she was holding a hearing for which she was not “competent”.
Thus, after the intervention of the prosecutor, the judge finally agreed to take a recess to analyze the situation. A few minutes later, all parties returned to the room and the judge announced that she was inhibiting herself from the procedure and that she would send it to the Provincial Court, which will delay the trial again, for at least months. In addition, she explained that her decision also implies annulling everything that has been done since the case arrived at her Court, once the Investigating Court ordered the opening of oral trial and sent her the case.
The day before, just as he had also done in writing before the hearing, San Ginés' defense had asked this same magistrate - whom he said on Tuesday was not competent - to annul the procedure and even to issue "an acquittal sentence", considering that the order to open oral trial was not valid because he insists that there is no "legally constituted" popular accusation. This argument, which was already rejected by the investigating judge, by the Provincial Court and by the Public Prosecutor's Office, did not serve to prevent the start of the trial, so he has ended up opting for a new strategy that, for the moment, has served to delay the hearing again.
When announcing her decision, the magistrate María Luisa Moreno pointed out that if she is not competent to hold the trial, she is also not competent to annul the order to open oral trial, as San Ginés' defense had been requesting. "The trial is terminated", she said at the end of her speech, after announcing that the procedure will now pass into the hands of the Court.
Call to the press at the doors of the Courts
Before the second day of the trial began this Tuesday, San Ginés' lawyer made statements to the media, who had been summoned to the doors of the Courts through the press office of Coalición Canaria. In that statement, in addition to advancing the measure he had just requested, he also assessed the first day of the trial, which he managed to annul moments later. Specifically, he referred to the statement of the former secretary of the Cabildo, Francisco Perdomo, who denied that Pedro San Ginés had asked him for a report before ordering the seizure.
“What is being discussed about whether it was in writing or oral, it was proven that it was oral. Whether it was more profound or less profound, yesterday he said that it was not very profound. But there was advice in any case”, José María Calero pointed out in this regard, with a tone very far from the one used in the statement sent the night before by San Ginés, supposedly in the name of his defense.
Specifically, what the former secretary stated is that the then president only asked him about this issue on one occasion, that it was an “informal” conversation and that he could only give him advice “in general” and “improvised”, because he did not know the file or the “inner workings” of the case, nor had he been able to study it. In addition, he referred to what he had previously stated during the instruction of this case, when he stated that he “would not have adopted the measure adopted by the president without a prior written legal report”, that he “would have been supported by prior written legal reports” and that when he gave his opinion he did so “with the reservations that it was a verbal report”.
“He also said that he knew and signed a subsequent report. He said many things, but in no case did he say that at some point he told Mr. San Ginés that it was illegal”, his lawyer has now gone on to state. “No one has said it in the entire case nor can anyone say it, because no one told him that it was illegal”, he maintained, thus marking a clear difference with what the former president has been maintaining for years, who claimed not only that no one warned him of the illegality, but that they had expressly told him that this measure was legal.
Even, in his statement this Monday, in which he refused to answer questions from the Public Prosecutor's Office and the popular accusation, San Ginés went so far as to assure that Perdomo had not only told him that he could order the seizure, but also that he could do so without a court order and without having any prior written legal report. And again, this clashed head-on with the statement of the former secretary, to whom the former president's defense did not ask any questions, not even to try to corroborate what San Ginés had stated.
“If he had simply pointed out the possibility that it was illegal, obviously Mr. San Ginés would not have made that decision”, his lawyer reiterated to the media. Afterwards, with the suspension of the hearing, he has also managed to stop the statements scheduled for this Tuesday and for next week, when, among others, representatives of Club Lanzarote, which owns the seized plants, were going to appear. This company was precisely the one that filed the complaint that gave rise to this case, and during the first day of the trial, several agents of the Local Police and the Civil Guard confirmed that they witnessed the seizure and saw how the representative of this company, Joaquín Cañada - who was going to testify next Monday - warned that they were carrying out an illegal act, by forcibly taking the facilities without even having a court order.
Something "obvious" for the defense that the judge, the Court and the Prosecutor's Office have denied
“It is so obvious that there is no accusation with procedural legitimacy that we were very surprised that the trial began. But once started, if a penalty of 12 years of special disqualification is requested, the competent body is the Provincial Court. The Criminal Court can only hear if the penalties of any nature do not exceed 10 years”, José María Calero, the lawyer, maintained this Tuesday, who had not raised this argument until now, despite the fact that the indictment in which that penalty is requested was presented more than two years ago.
“These are the rules of the game that bind everyone. The defense, the lawyer, but also the judges and jurisdictional bodies”, defended the lawyer, who both in the previous months and on the first day of trial had acted before this Court without making any warning in this regard.
In fact, in his appearance before the media, he insisted again that the magistrate should have accepted his request on Monday to annul the case, despite the fact that he maintains that she is not competent to intervene. “She said that she would resolve it in the sentence, but it makes no sense. It makes no sense to open a trial if there is no correctly constituted accusation. And it is obvious”, he reiterated again, despite the fact that this argument has been rejected by all the judicial instances where they have raised it.
Although San Ginés' defense insists that the group Podemos in the Cabildo appeared as an accusation, and not the former councilors as natural persons, the investigating judge who accepted that appearance has already repeatedly clarified the opposite. And the representative of the Public Prosecutor's Office also repeated it this Monday in the trial, during the presentation of the preliminary questions. Thus, after seeing that attempt rejected again, the defense has played this new card with the trial already started. "If that penalty is requested, the knowledge and the ruling corresponds to the Provincial Court", he alleged, two years and four months after the penalty requested by the accusation was known.
