The Montecarlo case will begin to be judged in Lanzarote next week, with five people accused of crimes of embezzlement of public funds in the San Bartolomé City Council in the dock. This piece should have been judged last September but the hearing had to be suspended, postponing its celebration until this month of March. Specifically, the hearing will be held between Tuesday the 19th and Wednesday the 20th in Arrecife and will end on Thursday the 21st in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. In addition, the three pieces of this same case focused on the Arrecife City Council are still pending trial, while the one that was focused on Fuerteventura has already been judged and already has a sentence.
In that trial, in addition, the first confession of the main defendant in this case occurred, the former auditor of Arrecife, San Bartolomé and La Oliva, Carlos Sáenz, who is currently in prison for another conviction in the Unión case. In addition, a few weeks ago Sáenz confessed again in the trial of another of the Unión pieces in which he is accused, and in which he admitted to having embezzled funds from the Arrecife City Council, authorizing payments for services that had not been provided.
Now, his statement in the new trial he faces could be key in case he also decides to confess the facts that are imputed to him as well as the other four defendants: the former mayor of Coalición Canaria Miguel Martín; the former Finance Councilor of the PP Javier Betancort; the treasurer Luis Manuel Rodríguez and the businessman José Vicente Montesinos. The sixth defendant in the case was Cándido Reguera, who died during the investigation.
Reguera was Finance Councilor in San Bartolomé before Betancort and both coincided again later in the Arrecife City Council, the first as mayor and the second in this case as a supplier, since after leaving the San Bartolomé City Council he began working for one of Montesinos' companies. These facts were investigated in another of the Montecarlo pieces that is pending trial and in which the names of most of the defendants are repeated, including that of Carlos Sáenz. According to the Prosecutor's Office, they all agreed to continue submitting false invoices and embezzling public funds, in this case from Arrecife.
Up to 12 years in prison, fines and return of what was stolen
Regarding the piece that is going to be judged now, the Prosecutor's Office asks for the highest penalty for Carlos Sáenz, for whom it requests 12 years in prison for alleged continued crimes of bribery, embezzlement, prevarication and falsification of a public document. In addition, it asks that he be disqualified for 22 years and that he pay a fine of 260,000 euros. Almost the same penalty is claimed for the businessman José Vicente Montesinos, who during the investigation admitted to having given bribes to the auditor in exchange for him authorizing the payment of his invoices. In total, Montesinos faces a request for 11 years and 11 months in prison, as well as a fine of 206,000 euros.
As for the other three defendants, the prosecutor considers that they are responsible for a crime of embezzlement and another of prevarication. For the treasurer of San Bartolomé, Luis Manuel Rodríguez Pérez, he asks for 5 years and 10 months in prison and absolute disqualification for ten years. Finally, for both the former mayor, Miguel Martín, and the former Finance Councilor, Javier Betancort, he demands 5 years and 9 months in prison and 10 years of absolute disqualification. In addition, the Prosecutor's Office asks that they all jointly return the 470,000 euros allegedly "stolen" from the Consistory, each in the proportional part that they allegedly contributed to embezzle.
"He devised the way to plunder public funds"
In its indictment, the Prosecutor's Office concludes that since he took office as auditor in San Bartolomé in July 2001, Carlos Sáenz "devised the way to arbitrarily plunder the municipal public funds placed at his disposal." To do this, he used "the privileged position that as fund auditor he held in said Corporation, carrying out without interruption until his arrest by court order on May 22, 2012, multiple actions aimed at obtaining large amounts of money, for himself and for third parties."
On the one hand, according to the Prosecutor's Office, the auditor "agreed" with the other four defendants to carry out the "unjustified payment of high amounts of public money to companies linked to José Vicente Montesinos." The prosecutor maintains that all the defendants participated "in common agreement, taking advantage of the public functions that each of them held." Thus, they tried to give "an appearance of legality" to these payments, awarding contracts in an allegedly "fraudulent" manner to Montesinos' companies. According to these contracts, the businessman was going to carry out alleged advisory services related to the collection of municipal taxes. Afterwards, they simulated "a fictitious provision" of these services, to justify the payment of the invoices.
Sáenz also authorized undue payments for himself
On the other hand, the prosecutor maintains that Sáenz also carried out other "criminal activities" acting alone, "by directly and fraudulently awarding himself undue amounts as remuneration for the exercise of his position." Carlos Saénz served as auditor of San Bartolomé by accumulation of functions, since he had his main position in Arrecife. This means that in San Bartolomé he could collect a maximum of 30 percent of his salary in the capital City Council. Thus, given that he received an average of 80,000 euros per year from Arrecife, his remuneration in San Bartolomé should have been around 24,000 euros.
However, most years he granted himself payments worth more than 30,000 and even almost 40,000 one of the years. According to the prosecutor, since taking office Sáenz "ordered the personnel of the department subject to his guidelines that no payroll should ever be issued referring to him." Thus, instead of collecting a payroll as an employee of the City Council, he collected his remuneration through payment orders issued in his favor, "as if it were an external consulting and assistance service that he provided to the Municipal Corporation." And according to the Prosecutor's Office, in this way "he fraudulently increased the amount of remuneration that legally corresponded to him, taking advantage of the fact that it was up to him to supervise and authorize the payment of these expenses."
