A technician from the Intervention department of the Arrecife City Council, called as a witness in the 'Montecarlo case,' explained to the Las Palmas Court that he kept the record of invoices separate from the general registry of the Consistory until 2011.
In his statement at the trial, this witness, Manuel Martín Gutierrez, said that there were businessmen who presented invoices with a manual stamp, but with the possibility of changing the date, and the signatures of the councilors and technicians were compared with a template they had with signatures in the department.
In one of them, there was a confusion, because they looked alike, between that of a technician accused in the case, Blas Cedrés, and that of a former councilor, who had not signed the invoice.
In many invoices, the owner of the signature was not identified, only "the councilor" or "the technician" was reflected, and according to this witness, it became "the City Council employee."
The accusations have tried to highlight in the first two sessions of the trial the lack of control they believe existed at that stage in the Arrecife City Council, since the invoices were not audited either in Intervention, or in Treasury -it was not their task-, or in Contracting, which depended on Intervention.
On the other hand, Carmen Villaverde, a management technician who was an accidental treasurer, told the court that she refused to authorize a report that allowed invoices to be paid without respecting the order of priority and, after that, she no longer served as a substitute.
The former accidental secretary, Asenet Padrón, even reported that her office had been entered in her absence and without her consent in search of a file under judicial investigation in the Montecarlo case, which the then mayor Cándido Reguera had taken to his home.
Padrón was removed from her position and had to be reinstated after winning two lawsuits. In this trial, she corroborated the treasurer's version that she had been pressured during a meeting to approve a list of pending invoices.
The former councilors Manuel Fajardo Feo, Teresa Lorenzo, and Blanca Blancas, in the opposition in the years 2011 and 2012, pointed out that they abstained or opposed the approval of the invoices in the Finance Committee.
Another of the issues that was asked about in the oral hearing was the contract for the dynamization of socio-cultural centers, awarded to Tunera Producciones, the company around which this last piece of the Montecarlo case revolves.
Two former workers, who were not socio-cultural animators, have testified. One of them pointed out that she was first hired by an agreement with the Canarian Employment Service for that project, and the accusations highlighted the unnecessary nature of the hiring, if it was already being carried out with agreement workers.
Another of the witnesses stated that she had not issued any invoice in the name of the company, since she was not self-employed, although an invoice in her name appears in the case.
On the other hand, the City Council's culture technician, Humberto Guadalupe, said that he had no relationship with that project and that he even filed a complaint about it, while Ana Gopar, an education technician, said that she was appointed by former councilor Lorenzo Lemaur to audit the contract and that in Contracting she was warned that it should go out to tender or have three offers because it exceeded the amount of minor contracts.
After that, he knew nothing more about the project.
The Montecarlo case originated in 2012 following an anonymous complaint to the Prosecutor's Office. The case investigates whether payments were made to the company Tunera, owned by businessman Eduardo Ferrer, for services not performed, duplicated, or with inflated invoices, in addition to irregularities in the contracting or justification of these services, for various events.
The Prosecutor's Office considers that "the amount arbitrarily and fraudulently paid by the Arrecife City Council" to the company amounts to "at least" 3.2 million euros "only between the years 2009 and 2012," of which "at least" 121,000 euros are "payments for services not provided." EFE