The Sixth Section of the Provincial Court has already issued the first ruling in Lanzarote in the Montecarlo case, including the prison sentences that the five defendants had accepted and imposing on them the obligation to pay almost 800,000 euros to the San Bartolomé City Council as compensation for the looting they carried out from this Consistory, as well as the payment of court costs.
As they had accepted when confessing the facts, the ruling sentences former auditor Carlos Sáenz to three years in prison; two and a half years to businessman José Vicente Montesinos and one year in prison to the treasurer, Luis Manuel Rodríguez, the former CC mayor, Miguel Martín, and the former Finance Councilor for the PP, Javier Betancort, who will also have to serve between one and a half and four years of disqualification.
The ruling considers it proven that the five committed continued crimes of administrative prevarication in conjunction with forgery of commercial documents and embezzlement of public funds. In addition, these crimes are joined by that of bribery in the case of Sáenz and Montesinos, who have been sentenced to the highest penalties and will also have to pay a fine of 65,000 euros each. As for the penalties, those imposed are those included in the compliance agreement reached between the Prosecutor's Office and the defendants, which were reduced by applying to all a "highly qualified mitigating circumstance of collaboration with the administration of Justice" for their confession.
Sentencing to joint and several and individual payments
Regarding civil liability for the more than 470,000 euros embezzled, the ruling imposes different penalties on each defendant, depending on the false invoices they authorized to be paid to two different Montesinos companies for services they knew had not been provided. In the case of Carlos Sáenz, José Vicente Montesinos and Luis Manuel Rodríguez, the ruling establishes that the three compensate the San Bartolomé City Council with the amount of 394,441 euros. This payment must be faced by the three jointly and severally, together with the companies Recingest and Progestril, as subsidiary civilly liable parties.
In addition, the former auditor must pay the Consistory another 74,420 euros for the amounts he unduly charged, by authorizing payments for himself above what he was legally entitled to. As with the rest, this figure must also be added to the legal interest until the payment is made.
As for Miguel Martín and Javier Betancort, the ruling makes them individually responsible for the invoices authorized by each one, thus making the compensation figure exceed that of the embezzled money. And it is that of those same payments also makes the other three defendants responsible -in their case jointly and severally-, since they also intervened in the payment of those invoices. In total, the ruling orders the former mayor to compensate the City Council with 233,574 euros and the former Finance Councilor with 211,949 euros. In both cases, Progestril and Recingest would also have to respond jointly and severally, although both are companies that are no longer active.
A plan to "plunder public funds"
The ruling of the Court, dated March 21, includes in full the account of the indictment presented three years ago by prosecutor Ignacio Stampa -who was the one who initiated and who was then in charge of the case-, which was fully recognized by the five defendants. Thus, in the proven facts, the ruling states that since he took office as auditor of San Bartolomé, Carlos Sáenz "devised a way to arbitrarily plunder the municipal public funds placed at his disposal".
To do this, on the one hand he acted individually, awarding himself undue amounts for himself, and on the other he "colluded" with the other four defendants, as they themselves admitted in the trial, "all participating by common agreement, taking advantage of the public functions that each of them held, through the unjustified payment of high amounts of public money to companies linked to the defendant José Vicente Montesinos, under the appearance of legality through the fraudulent awarding of contracts with said companies, and a fictitious provision of advice and collaboration with the municipal economic services by them".
Thus, between 2002 and 2012 they authorized the payment of dozens of invoices for services not provided, through different fraudulent contracts also signed with Recingest and Progestril. During the first period, the Finance Councilor was Cándido Reguera, who was also accused in the case -both in this piece and in two others focused on Arrecife, where he was later mayor- but died during the investigation. As for the second stage, the Finance Councilor of San Bartolomé was Javier Betancort, who after leaving the Consistory began working for Montesinos and is also accused in another piece of Arrecife, in this case not as a public office but as an alleged supplier of the City Council -being Reguera mayor and Sáenz auditor-, having charged invoices that the Prosecutor's Office maintains also did not correspond to any service. Currently, Betancort is the manager of Juan Francisco Rosa's communication group.
He ordered payments knowing that the service had not been provided
In the piece of San Bartolomé, Javier Betancort acknowledged that "he ordered the payment of the invoices that were presented to him, knowing that they did not obey the provision of any service for the Department he directed", which is what the indictment that has now been considered proven in the ruling maintained.
In addition to the money embezzled in this case, the defendants also intended to charge other invoices to the City Council, worth more than 46,000 euros and corresponding to the year 2007. In July 2009, the auditor incorporated those invoices into the City Council's accounting as recognized obligations, "knowing of their mendacity". However, then the government group had changed and the new head of Finance, Antonio Rocío, denied the payment, as stated in the ruling.
Later, in 2012 Montesinos tried again to collect those invoices -which had been conformed by Javier Betancort and authorized by Carlos Sáenz- through the plan promoted by the State to settle the debt with the suppliers of local administrations, but "said fraud was again discovered by the municipal authorities". According to the ruling, it was the mayor María Dolores Corujo who through a decree warned the Ministry of Finance not to pay those invoices.
