The private prosecution in the Stratvs case, exercised by Urban Transparency, has requested that testimony be deduced from the statement given in the trial by the former Minister of Agriculture of the Cabildo, Francisco Fabelo, since it considers that he incurred in a crime of false testimony in his appearance as a witness.
When presenting her conclusions, the lawyer Irma Ferrer recalled that Fabelo denied having been an employee of Rosa while holding positions in the Cabildo, despite the fact that at that time he appeared in up to two national media outlets making statements as manager of Finca de Uga. "I have been presented as manager of Finca de Uga in my time as a politician, but it is not true", the former councilor declared in the trial, despite the fact that he appeared both in a report in El País and in the TVE program "Un país para comérselo" speaking on behalf of the company and with the position of manager.
However, although he was expressly asked about it, in his statement he did not clarify whether he worked or provided services for Rosa while holding public office. "Outside of my working hours I have not stopped having contact with some people, not being hired by them," he limited himself to saying.
What Fabelo did assure, according to the lawyer of Urban Transparency, is that in the Cabildo he "abstained" from intervening in matters related to Rosa. "That's false", the lawyer stressed, pointing out that this is "accredited" in one of the files that are part of the summary of the Stratvs case. "His intervention in a file of Juan Francisco Rosa is expressly stated", added the lawyer of the prosecution, in reference to the sanctioning file that was opened to the businessman for planting palm trees in breach of the authorization that had been granted to him and destroying protected socos of La Geria.
Thus, although she stressed that this document is already incorporated into the case, she announced that they will request all the files from the Cabildo so that proceedings can be opened against Francisco Fabelo, since she considers that he lied in his statement. In addition to leading the areas of Agriculture, Livestock, Economy and Economic Promotion, Fabelo later held the Ministry of the Environment, and Pedro San Ginés also delegated to him the representation of the Cabildo in several key bodies in matters of Territorial Policy and the Environment, such as the Cotmac, the Apmun, the Standing Committee of the Board of Trustees of the Timanfaya National Park and the Insular Board of Trustees of Protected Spaces. Later, after ceasing to be a councilor, San Ginés appointed him coordinator of Landscape and Food Sovereignty of the Cabildo, until he was dismissed a few months ago by the new government group.
"Rosa has 1,500 employees that he pays, but he also has employees who are paid with public money," denounced the lawyer, who dedicated a good part of her conclusions to describing Juan Francisco Rosa's "amazing capacity for influence" on the island.
"Everyone accepts their sentences and nobody says anything"
"It's like the elephant in the room. It's so big that we don't see it, but it crushes us against the walls," the lawyer exemplified. "It's difficult to prove, but not in Lanzarote," she added, addressing the Chamber of the Provincial Court, referring to the crime of influence peddling for which the businessman is also accused in this trial. "It's the omertá, it's the law of silence," she pointed out, recalling the testimony of one of the complainants in this case, Luis Guirao. "He explained it: Everyone is convicted and he is saved. What he meant is that in the Yate case, in the Plan Playa Blanca case, in the Princesa Yaiza case, in the Son Bou case, in the Puerto Marina Rubicón case, the technicians and mayor are accused and convicted, and nobody says anything. Everyone accepts their sentences. In Lanzarote what there is is the silence of fear, the complicit silence," she warned.
In addition, she recalled the statement of another witness, Olga María Ramos de Paiz, who recounted in the trial the "years of suffering, of enormous lies and of impotence" that her family suffered when trying to confront the businessman Juan Francisco Rosa, who occupied land of his property to build this macrocomplex. "She told it with a dignity that is moving. She said: We can't with this man. He made us a smear campaign that ruined our family. We couldn't find a lawyer to confront him", Ferrer recalled.
In addition, she also referred to the statements of the officials who have testified as experts in the trial, both from the Cabildo and from the Government of the Canary Islands, who stated that they received political pressure when preparing their reports for this legal case. "We ran out of experts. Joana Macías was removed because she was reporting to the Court, Leopoldo Díaz was removed because he reported to the Court against Juan Francisco Rosa. Doña Sonia Gómez was removed and Doña Elisa Perdomo was removed. We ran out of experts. It was necessary to resort to the experts of the Prosecutor's Office because nobody in the Government of the Canary Islands, nobody in the Cabildo of Lanzarote and nobody in the City Council of Yaiza wanted to report. I know it's difficult to prove, but it's the elephant in the room. It crushes you against the wall," the lawyer insisted.
In addition, Ferrer contrasted this attitude with the one that the Government of the Canary Islands has had in defense of the three people accused of having intervened in the authorization of the winery. "I understand that the Government of the Canary Islands appears for the right of defense, but I do not understand that it does not protect the technicians who have intervened as experts in this case," she pointed out, recalling that "some have had to take sick leave" because of the "pressures" they received. During the trial, the lawyer of the three defendants of the regional Executive, who in turn is the head of the legal services of the Government of the Canary Islands, has even asked that Urban Transparency be condemned in costs, and with subsidiary personal responsibility of its partners, even reproaching them for going to the criminal route to denounce this case. "We can understand Rosa's threats, but not that they come from the Government of the Canary Islands. It would seem that it is an act of intimidation," questioned the lawyer of Urban Transparency, who recalled that the association presented in its day a "well-founded complaint" and then limited itself to "coadyuvar" as a private prosecution in an "impeccable instruction" that was carried out by the magistrate Silvia Muñoz and the prosecutor Ignacio Stampa, who were the ones who promoted the proceedings.
"Tremendous interference in the work of the experts"
In the case of the Cabildo, Irma Ferrer also referred to the statement of the jurist Joana Macías, who "to protect herself" even recorded in a diligence in the Cabildo the delivery of the report that the Court had requested, because the conversations of Juan Francisco Rosa and his lawyer with the then island director of Territorial Planning, Rafael Martín, "were constant" and "movements were being made below". When the Court again requested that opinion, together with another technician prepared by Gustavo Navarro, San Ginés sent them with a note in which he warned that they had not been "supervised or validated".
"Just as happened in the Government of the Canary Islands, the legal reports of judicial experts passed through the control and supervision of the governing bodies. I want to warn of the danger that this has for the administration of justice," Ferrer stressed, pointing out that this implies "a tremendous interference in the work of impartiality of the experts", as the investigating judge of the case, Silvia Muñoz, also warned San Ginés at the time.
As for the City Council of Yaiza, the lawyer recalled that when it finally ordered the sealing of the Stratvs restaurant, the then Councilor for Urban Planning, José Antonio Rodríguez -who was already convicted in the first piece of this case- came out in a media outlet "justifying himself". "It is the Court that forces me. Forgive me, Juan Francisco, it is the judge who forces me, it is the Public Prosecutor," the lawyer ironized, recalling the statements of the councilman.
In addition, she also questioned the defense arguments that have been used by the politicians and technicians accused in the case, shielding themselves in each other and downplaying their own reports or resolutions. "I was tired, I don't have the necessary training, I didn't have the means to do it, I didn't know the legislation, I had just arrived in office, look, I was told to do it like this... Those are the arguments that everyone uses," reproached Irma Ferrer, who even compared some of the actions with "the cabin of the Marx Brothers".
In one of the cases, she recalled that there are up to three different resolutions authorizing the extension of the municipal license of Stratvs, which in reality had already expired when the works began. In the first, the then mayor, José Francisco Reyes, authorized the extension in the name of Juan Francisco Rosa. Later, he issued another decree in the name of the company. And finally, José Antonio Rodríguez signed a third resolution as acting mayor, in which in addition to authorizing the extension he added the word "bodega", which did not appear in the first license, since what was initially authorized was an underground warehouse. "The capacity for influence is amazing. Everyone on the island knows it, everyone knows who he is," insisted the lawyer, who also reviewed all the procedures that were resolved from different administrations in a matter of days and even on weekends, without requesting reports that were mandatory and without Rosa having accredited even the ownership of the land, which was not even his.
