The criminal case for the illegal Costa Roja license finally has a trial date, and it will be held 16 years after the former mayor of Yaiza, José Francisco Reyes, granted that permit to build more than 1,000 homes, 228 commercial premises and 2,559 parking spaces at the entrance to Playa Blanca. The hearing will begin on September 26, according to the schedule already agreed by the Criminal Court Number 3 of Arrecife.
Along with Reyes, the former City Council secretary, Vicente Bartolomé Fuentes, and the former head of the Technical Office, Antonio Lorenzo, accused of urban planning prevarication crimes, will be in the dock. Currently, none of the three hold those positions, from which they were removed by other corruption convictions.
In its indictment, the Prosecutor's Office highlights the “extraordinary and undue delays” that occurred during the investigation of this case, and applies them as a mitigating factor to reduce the penalty. Thus, it only requests a sentence of three years and three months of disqualification for each one - which currently would not have practical effects - as well as a fine of 3,960 euros.
For its part, the private prosecution raises the request to one year and three months in prison and seven years of disqualification, considering that it was not a single crime, but a continuous crime. And it is that a year after granting the construction license, the accused also approved the execution project, despite the repeated warnings they had already received from the Cabildo about its illegality.
The origin of Unión
Along with Reyes, Bartolomé Fuentes and Lorenzo, the businessman who received that license, Luis Lleó, was also investigated in the case, although his indictment was finally dismissed, as “sufficient evidence” of the payment of a bribe was not found. However, Lleó was convicted of bribery in the Unión case, which arose from another attempted bribery linked to this same plot.
At that time, after Reyes granted this permit for the thousand homes, the Cabildo had obtained precautionary measures to stop the construction - later the Courts declared the license illegal - and the then councilor Carlos Espino had also gone to the criminal route.
It was then when Espino received an attempted bribe from Lleó, who used Fernando Becerra as an intermediary, to try to unblock the construction of the plot, and also for Carlos Espino to withdraw the criminal complaint. The councilor then filed another complaint with the UCO, which gave rise to the Unión case.
However, while that piece of Unión has already been tried and convicted more than two years ago - with Lleó's confession-, this previous procedure had been paralyzed for years in the Court of Instruction Number 3 of Arrecife, during the stage of Judge Rafael Lis. When this magistrate retired - who was sanctioned for intervening in another procedure despite his ties with Juan Francisco Rosa - the judge who replaced him resumed this and other cases that had been delayed for years in his Court.
A file for a macro-project resolved in three months
In its qualification brief, the prosecution recalls that it was on August 31, 2006 when Luis Lleó, on behalf of the entity Residencial Costa Roja SL, submitted the license application. Only 13 days later, the secretary, Vicente Bartolomé Fuentes, “with full knowledge of the illegality of the project”, issued a legal report to “give the appearance of legality to the file”, “limiting himself to generically listing legal precepts and requirements that should have been met” and without “making express reference to the project that was being reported or whether such legal requirements concurred in it”.
Two months later, the other defendant, Antonio Lorenzo, issued his report as head of the Technical Office. And according to the prosecution, he did so with the same objective of giving “the appearance of legality”. In his report, he points out that he limited himself “to speculating on alleged reasons why the project could fit, deliberately and crudely ignoring to pronounce on the manifest illegality of the same”. Both Lorenzo and Bartolomé Fuentes have already been convicted in other cases for a similar 'modus operandi', which consisted of issuing empty reports, on which Reyes later based to grant the licenses.
Finally, 20 days after having that report, the mayor granted the permit, completing in three months and five days the file to authorize the construction of a project that would have multiplied the population of Playa Blanca, since it implied more beds than inhabitants Tinajo had at that time.
In addition, they did not request mandatory reports from the Cabildo and the Government of the Canary Islands and hid that license, which was finally revealed by La Voz in February 2007. From then on there were numerous warnings from the Island Corporation, but the three defendants continued with the execution file. And in this case, they solved everything the same day. On June 8, 2007, Antonio Lorenzo issued a technical report, Vicente Bartolomé a legal report and Reyes granted that execution permit.