The Court of Instruction number 4 of Arrecife has admitted a complaint filed by the Podemos Group of the Cabildo of Lanzarote and has already ordered several steps to investigate the occupation of green areas that should have been public in Playa Blanca, specifically in the Costa Papagayo Partial Plan. Among those accused of alleged crimes against the public administration are the former mayor of Yaiza, José Francisco Reyes, the former secretary, Vicente Bartolomé Fuentes, and the businessmen Juan Francisco Rosa and Juan Luis Lorenzo, as well as the companies Hotel Princesa Yaiza, Salmepa and Getsu No Denwa.
The facts that have been denounced are related to the administrative procedures for the elaboration and approval of the Urban Agreements signed by José Francisco Reyes with the commercial entity Getsu no Denwa, S.L., and with the commercial entity Salmepa, S.L., within the scope of the Costa Papagayo Partial Plan, by which it was allowed to occupy that land without even paying any type of fee to the City Council.
"The urbanization and construction actions in the scope of the Costa Papagayo Partial Plan allegedly constitute an episode of manifest administrative corruption in the crimes of urban planning prevarication and fraud against the Public Administration, whose negative consequences for the municipal heritage and the local public treasury, with the parallel unjust enrichment by private entities, continue to occur to this day," explains the Podemos group in a statement in which it announces the content of this order, issued on December 12 by Judge Ricardo Fiestras.
"One of the biggest cases of urban corruption", according to Meca
"We are facing one of the biggest cases of urban corruption that the island has suffered in recent decades, with an incalculable economic damage to the coffers of the Yaiza City Council, which has allowed for almost thirty years the private exploitation of public land that should have been used for green areas, sports facilities or roads," says the spokesman of the Podemos Group in the Cabildo of Lanzarote, Carlos Meca.
"This case is one of the best examples of criminal urbanism, in which the Consistory has given away to some businessmen millions of euros that should have been used to improve the quality of life of the citizens of Yaiza. And the worst thing is that this fraud continues to be committed today, as the Kikoland facilities continue to operate and generate large revenues for Juan Francisco Rosa," added Meca.
In addition, the party recalls that these facts are added to those they recently denounced, as a result of the agreements that have been signed and are intended to be signed by the administrations with the promoters of this partial plan. On the one hand, the one relating to the "assumption by the Yaiza City Council of the urbanization costs derived from the breaches of the promoters (public lighting)" and, on the other hand, "the content of the Agreements that the Island Council and the Yaiza City Council intend to sign with the promoters of the Costa Papagayo Partial Plan and that involve the payment with public money of part of the urbanization works that should have been assumed by the promoting entities".
"A series of illegal actions to privatize public land"
The complaint that has just been admitted for processing states that the urbanizing companies of Costa Papagayo did not comply with the commitment assumed before the Public Administration to record the legal transfer of the public land compulsorily ceded to the municipal heritage, by virtue of the determinations of the partial plan, and that should have been used for green areas, roads and complementary facilities. "However, no one prevented them from continuing to execute since 1989 the parceling approved in its day, building and exploiting the accommodation plant contained in the Costa Papagayo Partial Plan with the connivance of public representatives," the complainants argue.
The facts described in the complaint reveal "a series of illegal actions committed in the urbanization process of the Costa Papagayo partial plan, aimed at allowing the privatization of a large part of the plan's scope, to the detriment of the rational and public use of natural resources ordered by the Spanish Constitution, the Land Law and the territorial legal system developed in the Canary Islands," they add.
The Kikoland case and the underground tunnel of the Hotel Princesa Yaiza
The object of the complaint is "the direct award of a public project on public land, without prior bidding, as well as the execution of a public work and facilities for private exploitation, without any public bidding contest." Among these facilities is the Kikoland, which the complaint recalls is "intimately related to the Hotel Princesa Yaiza, and is especially painful due to the size of the occupation of public land and the economic benefits illegally obtained by facilities that are sold on the website of the Hotel Princesa Yaiza, as if it were a complementary offer of the Hotel".
To this, the complainants add that "it is not even recorded that the Yaiza City Council has reported on the totality of the land destined for roads or green areas, which have been the object of illicit exploitation and occupation during these years, given that it is public and notorious that in the Costa Papagayo Partial Plan a tunnel of great dimensions has been built, which connects the illegal hotel Princesa Yaiza with the illegal hotel Son Bou, and that, in a subterranean and transversal way, crosses the general road that runs through the partial plan, that is to say, land destined for roads (obviously, the subsoil also forms part of the public domain)".
The complaint argues that all the actions that were carried out to occupy that land "flagrantly infringe the regulations that regulate public contracting and urban planning, allow the obtaining of benefits illegally obtained by the companies that promoted and signed the agreements, and cause economic damage to the municipality of Yaiza that reaches limits never calculated".
