The Provincial Court of Las Palmas has ordered the Investigating Court number 2 of Arrecife to investigate whether the former president of the Cabildo of Lanzarote, Pedro San Ginés, of CC, has coerced the councilor of the corporation Juan Manuel Sosa to resign and facilitate his return to the government, opening the door to a motion of censure.
According to the complaint filed on May 13 by Sosa, San Ginés would have urged him to renounce his position as councilor of the Cabildo of Lanzarote, threatening him with the filing of a lawsuit for continuing to collect his salary as spokesman for Coalición Canaria.
According to the account made by Sosa in court, San Ginés summoned him to his home in Arrecife, where he showed him on a laptop the text of the lawsuit he threatened to file, and that ended with the request for up to six years in prison and the demand to reimburse the 85,000 euros allegedly collected unduly, an extreme that has been repeatedly denied by the Cabildo of Lanzarote and the Government of the Canary Islands.
Subsequently, and always according to Sosa's complaint, San Ginés gave him a second document to read with alleged news that would be published in two national newspapers if he did not resign from his position as councilor of the Cabildo before the celebration of the plenary session of the Cabildo that took place on Friday, May 14, 2021.
According to the complaint of Juan Manuel Sosa, the events occurred after a series of conversations, Whatsapp messages and calls aimed at reconsidering his support for the government group of the Cabildo of Lanzarote to enable a change in the corporation, "with a high degree of pressure that caused him a state of permanent tension".
The councilor has stressed that many of these communications were intended to organize a meeting with Fernando Clavijo, general secretary of CC, and that it was his refusal to meet with the former president of the Government of the Canary Islands the reason given by San Ginés to request a final meeting at his home.
In it, according to Sosa, the coercion took place and from the next day, when he did not accede to his pretensions, the "harassment campaign" against him began.
"Exceeds, by far, the political game"
The head of the Court number 2 of Instruction of Arrecife agreed last May to file the case considering that the perpetration of the crime was not duly accredited.
However, Sosa appealed to the Provincial Court, whose Sixth Section has revoked the order of dismissal considering that there are reasonable grounds to investigate the facts reported by the councilor.
The Court of Las Palmas argues in its order that "warning" a person of the filing of a lawsuit in the event that he does not resign from the public office he holds "exceeds, by far, the political game that the investigating magistrate affirms", since - the court continues - "it is not that a person is threatened with the filing of a lawsuit", since the criminal action is public, "but that he is 'warned' of such filing to, presumably, obtain an action from the recipient of the warning that he does not want to carry out, resign, considering therefore that the decision not to investigate is shown as hasty".
The Court number 2 of Arrecife decreed at the end of January the reopening of the procedure, in which according to judicial sources have already declared both the complainant and the defendant.
With Sosa's, there are already three open court cases against the former president of the Cabildo of Lanzarote, Pedro San Ginés, who is awaiting trial for the illegal seizure of the Montaña Roja desalination plant. In addition, he is being investigated for an alleged crime of false accusation in the case of the tourist centers against the deceased businessman Antonio González.
