The Sixth Section of the Provincial Court has acquitted Juan Francisco Rosa and the rest of the defendants in the main trial of the Stratvs case. The ruling, however, can be appealed before the Supreme Court.
The Prosecutor's Office requested 15 years in prison for the businessman, as well as the demolition of the facilities, while the popular accusation exercised by Urban Transparency raised the request for Rosa to 21 years in prison. However, the Court has acquitted the businessman of all the crimes he was accused of, as well as his company BTL Lanzarote, owner of the winery.
Specifically, in its ruling, the court acquits Juan Francisco Rosa of the continued crime of forgery in a public document committed by individuals, the crime of usurpation of real estate, the crime against land management, the crime against historical heritage, the crime against the environment, the continued crime of qualified fraud, the crime of theft, and the crime of influence peddling of which he was accused. As for the company BTL Lanzarote, it has been acquitted of the crimes of usurpation, against land management, against historical heritage and against the environment.
The architect of the winery and owner of a part of the land on which it was built, Miguel Ángel Armas Matallana, has also been acquitted of the continued crime of forgery in a public document committed by individuals, the crime of usurpation of real estate, the crime against land management, the crime against historical heritage, the crime against the environment and the continued crime of qualified fraud of which he was accused. For him, the Prosecutor's Office requested the second highest penalty, specifically 10 years in prison.
Likewise, the Sixth Section of the Court has acquitted the two technicians from the Government of the Canary Islands who gave the license for the construction of Stratvs, Faustino García Márquez and Armando Villavicencio Delgado, and the then Director General of Urban Planning, Juan César Muñoz, who were accused of a crime of urban prevarication. In this case, the Prosecutor's Office requested fines and disqualification penalties for the three.
The former mayor of Yaiza, José Francisco Reyes, the former Councilor for Urban Planning, José Antonio Rodríguez - who was also accused of a crime against the environment - and the surveyor of the Technical Office of Yaiza, Pablo Carrasco, who have also been acquitted, were also accused of urban prevarication.
Likewise, the Sixth Section of the Court has acquitted the former secretary of Yaiza, Vicente Bartolomé Fuentes, who was accused of fraud against the public administration in conjunction with prevarication; and the employee of the Cadastre, Blas Noda, who was accused of a crime of forgery in a public document.
The former manager of the Insular Water Council, José Juan Hernández Duchemín, who was accused of environmental prevarication, has also been acquitted.
"The natural course of the waters of a ravine was not destroyed"
In the ruling, the court considers it proven that "the house whose rehabilitation was authorized was in a ruinous state before the work and lacked ethnographic value." Likewise, "it is not considered proven that the rehabilitation of the property carried out under that license was entirely a new construction."
In addition, although the ruling states that Juan Francisco Rosa carried out "other urban actions complementary to the winery on the farm, such as a ramp, esplanade for parking, terrace, pergola, restaurant and others for which he did not have authorization or license," it points out that they "are accessory to the main construction."
The Sixth Section of the Provincial Court also considers that "the natural course of the waters of a ravine was not destroyed with the works, since said natural course did not exist." "There was no source in the land where the works were carried out at the time of the start of the works," he adds.
Likewise, he points out that as "there is no water network in La Geria nor probabilities of the existence of underground water masses, therefore it is not possible that the septic tank sanitation system that the winery possessed had endangered the life and health of people."
It should be remembered that the Stratvs case was divided into two parts due to the jurisdiction of Gladys Acuña, who was then a regional parliamentarian, with the facts related to the granting of the activity license to the winery being judged in a first trial, which was what Acuña intervened in as mayor of Yaiza.
After it, eight of the ten people who sat on the bench were convicted of prevarication, one of them Gladys Acuña herself, who was forced to leave politics after being imposed 14 years of disqualification and the payment of a fine of 10,800 euros, in a ruling that is already final.
In that ruling, the businessman Juan Francisco Rosa was also acquitted, although not the other two people who repeated as defendants in the main trial, who were the former mayor of Yaiza, José Francisco Reyes, and the former councilor José Antonio Rodríguez, who, however, have been acquitted in this second part.
