The trial section of the Court of Auditors has concluded that the current vice president of the Cabildo of Lanzarote, María Jesús Tovar (PP), is allegedly responsible for an accounting deficit worth 88,000 euros of public funds from the Arrecife City Council, during her time as councilor of Social Welfare of the city between 2019 and 2023.
This is stated in the provisional liquidation report to which Efe has had access, issued on April 24, after the appearance of Tovar and the former councilors of that same area, Eva de Anta and Victoria Sande, both from the PSOE, also cited as responsible for previous actions.
The instructor of the case considers that there may be a deficit (unjustified debit balance of an account) "because there were some subsidies whose destination had not been justified and the corresponding reimbursement procedures were not initiated in time, giving rise to the prescription of such reimbursement actions and consequently causing an alleged damage to public funds."
In her opinion, the councilors would not have activated the necessary mechanisms to avoid the prescription of the reimbursement action.
The actions originate from a letter from the Public Prosecutor's Office in which it revealed alleged irregularities in the justification of the subsidies "granted and paid" and appreciated in an audit report from the Court of Auditors to several Canary Island city councils, including Arrecife.
The aid extends from 2016 to 2020. These are aids for rent, food, dental prostheses, hearing aids, water, basic needs, glasses and even for burial.
What motivates the start of the responsibility is a decree signed by Tovar in February 2021 by which all unjustified subsidies were declared prescribed for which four years had passed since the end of the justification period.
A report from a municipal technician, from December 2024, estimates that the total amount of subsidies granted and not justified is 78,529 euros. To this amount must be added the default interest.
Tovar and Sande would be allegedly responsible for all that amount, who should respond by returning it, if the procedure culminates in this way, while De Anta would only be responsible for 13,000 euros.
Only those who are in charge of handling public funds or effects can incur accounting liability.
"Previously and provisionally, since the appropriate legal mechanisms had not been carried out to recover or reimburse the amounts whose destination had not been justified, the prescription of the reimbursement procedures for the subsidies object of these actions occurred, producing an alleged deficit in the public funds of the Arrecife City Council," the provisional liquidation report states.
The Court of Auditors considers that the councilors of Social Welfare are the competent bodies to grant subsidies but also to initiate the corresponding reimbursement procedures.
"The persons who, in the use of the legally attributed powers, did not activate in a timely manner the appropriate legal mechanisms to recover the amounts corresponding to unjustified subsidies and, in this way, avoid an effective damage to public funds, are considered jointly and severally liable direct accounting officers," the report says.
Tovar stated in her appearance that "there is an error of interpretation in the audit report, when talking about prescription of the subsidy", since her decree referred only "to the prescription of the infraction derived from the lack of justification and not to the prescription of the reimbursement action.
