The First Section of the Provincial Court of Las Palmas has acquitted lawyer Felipe Fernández Camero and the rest of the defendants for payments received from the Yaiza City Council.
Camero was accused of an alleged continued crime of forgery in a commercial document committed by an individual, a continued crime of administrative prevarication and another alleged crime of embezzlement of public funds.
Along with the lawyer, the former mayor of Yaiza José Francisco Reyes, the former secretary Vicente Bartolomé Fuentes, and the official Antonio Fernández Martín, who were accused of a continued crime of administrative prevarication and embezzlement of public funds, have been acquitted.
The judicial ruling was made public this Tuesday, after the trial was held in June 2022 in Arrecife and Gran Canaria. In addition, the company Adelfas 24, S.L. has also been acquitted.
An appeal for cassation can be filed against the ruling within five days.
The Public Prosecutor's Office argued during the trial that the payments to the lawyer lasted for more than a decade (from 1996 to 2012), that they were made without processing any contracting file and that they responded to the "mere whim and monetary desire" of the lawyer Fernández Camero, for whom he was asking for six years in prison.
In a ruling made public this Tuesday, the first section of the Court responds to the Prosecutor's Office that there was neither prevarication, nor was embezzlement of public funds committed, nor can a crime of document forgery be imputed to the defendants.
As the defense argued during the trial, the court declares proven that there was an agreement of the plenary session of the Yaiza City Council of August 9, 1980 by which it was agreed to hire the services as a lawyer of Fernández Camero, who worked for the City Council in a "fixed rate" system; that is, charging a fixed remuneration, regardless of how many procedures he legally advised or defended the City Council.
And that agreement, the magistrates add, "legitimized the actions of the mayor José Francisco Reyes and the comptroller Vicente Bartolomé" by continuing to resort to the legal services of that lawyer, "excluding arbitrariness in their actions."
The Court does not appreciate any evidence that allows determining that the mayor and the comptrollers prevaricated when hiring the legal services of the lawyer Fernández Camero and, in addition, it considers that it has been proven in the trial that there was no "concert or agreement of wills between the four defendants tending to plunder public funds" of the Yaiza City Council.
For the magistrates, it is relevant that the services for which Fernández Camero charged were actually provided and that his fees were not "disproportionate or excessive."
And this leads them to also rule out the crime of embezzlement, because, as they explain in the ruling, "there is no evidence of damage or possible harm to municipal interests, whose claims, on the other hand, in many procedures were resolved favorably" with the intervention of Fernández Camero.
Regarding the thesis of the Public Prosecutor's Office that this lawyer had "colluded" with Mayor Reyes to "plunder" the City Council, the Court reminds the public prosecution that the mayors who succeeded the defendant continued to count on him.
"The maintenance of legal advice services by the mayoress Gladys Acuña Machín, who succeeded the defendant Francisco Reyes in the position of mayor, constitutes an objective fact that allows us to exclude that concert of wills on the part of the four defendants, since she does not seem suspected of being conniving with Mr. Reyes, given that she acceded to the position when a motion of censure presented against José Francico Reyes prospered," remarks the magistrate rapporteur, Inocencia Eugenia Cabello.
And, with respect to the possible falsehood, the court dismisses those charges with arguments like this: "Both the fee statements for legal advice and for the defense of the Yaiza City Council in a legal arbitration procedure, in numerous administrative appeals and in several civil procedures respond to professional services actually provided and originate from a lawful legal relationship."
