The prosecutor Javier Ródenas has modified the indictment of piece 12 of the Unión case, focused on the collection of bribes by PIL officials and the embezzlement of funds from the Arrecife City Council, and has reduced the sentence request for the confessed defendants and for Elena Martín, while increasing that of Antonio Machín. For the historical leader of the PIL, Dimas Martín, the request for a 17-year prison sentence has been maintained.
Ródenas announced these changes this Thursday, during one of the last sessions of the trial, which continues to be held in Gran Canaria. Regarding Dimas's daughter, Elena Martín, who was the head of the Arrecife Contracting Office, the Prosecutor's Office withdraws the request for imprisonment and replaces it with nine years of disqualification from holding public office, by eliminating the crime of revealing privileged information and the crime of fraud against the administration and maintaining only that of administrative prevarication. Similarly, according to the newspaper La Provincia, the prosecutor also withdrew the request for a four-year prison sentence for the former head of the Arrecife Technical Office, Rafael Arrocha, reducing it to one year of disqualification and a fine of 2,160 euros.
As for the former Councilor for Urban Planning, Parks and Gardens, Ubaldo Becerra, the prosecutor has also reduced his sentence request for confessing his participation in the criminal plot. Specifically, he reduced the request from 17 years to 4 years, five months and one day in prison for the crimes of illicit association, continued bribery, embezzlement of public funds, prevarication, falsification of commercial documents, fraud against the administration and disclosure of privileged information.
Request for more than 16 years in prison for Antonio Machín
However, for the former Councilor for Parks and Gardens, Antonio Machín, the prosecutor has increased the sentence request from 14 years and six months to 16 years in prison and five months. And it is that, according to La Provincia, the prosecutor considers that the crime of bribery that he charged him with in his day is continuous and therefore has increased the request for punishment for it from three years to four years and 11 months in prison. In addition, Machín is accused of six more crimes, adding up to a total of 16 years and five months in prison.
For the former auditor of Arrecife, Carlos Sáenz, the Prosecutor's Office has reduced the sentence request from seven years and six months to three and a half years after he also confessed his crimes. Likewise, according to La Provincia, the Public Prosecutor's Office has also reduced the fines for the businessmen Antonio Gómez Ruiz and Jesús Martín for confessing that they paid commissions to the accused to award them several projects.
It must be remembered that with respect to the engineer Antonio Cárdenas, the prosecutor had already modified his writing on the first day of the trial, eliminating the crime of fraud against the public administration and leaving only that of taking advantage of privileged information, which is what he confessed. Specifically, the request for imprisonment for Cárdenas was eliminated, replacing it with a fine of 4,225 euros, with which the accused showed his agreement.
