The Provincial Prosecutor's Office of Las Palmas considers that there are "sufficient indications" to bring the president of the Cabildo, Pedro San Ginés, to trial for a crime against the public administration and another of coercion in the seizure of the Montaña Roja desalination plant. This is stated in a document dated October 5, in which it asks that the last appeal presented by San Ginés' defense be rejected.
With this appeal, the president intends to annul the order that ended the investigation of the case and that initiated the procedure to bring him to trial, but the private prosecution -represented by Cub Lanzarote-, the public prosecution -represented by the Podemos group in the Cabildo- and now the Public Prosecutor's Office have asked that it be rejected and that the order of the investigating judge be confirmed.
"It cannot be appreciated in the appealed resolution any lack of motivation but, on the contrary, it profusely motivates the relation of facts that the instructor considers indicatively accredited", states in her writing the prosecutor Celia María Asensio Rodríguez.
The proceedings requested by San Ginés "have no influence"
Regarding the proceedings that San Ginés requested to be incorporated into the case, and which he questions have not been taken into account by the investigating judge, the Prosecutor's Office responds by calling these documents "irrelevant". "The proceedings to which the appellant refers have no influence whatsoever on the facts or on their indicatively criminal appearance," he warns.
These proceedings, according to the prosecutor, "are only aimed at proving that, prior to the expropriation, Club Lanzarote had been producing and selling water illegally." And that, she points out, "is irrelevant" in the face of the facts that the investigation has revealed and that are included in the order of the investigating judge. Thus, the Prosecutor's Office recalls that as president of the Insular Water Council, San Ginés issued a resolution ordering the seizure "without having the prior written legal opinion on the viability of the measure", since he did not have a single report that supported that decision.
In addition, he emphasizes that Pedro San Ginés "agreed to the seizure without hearing the interested parties." And also that this measure, "extreme and exceptionally burdensome", is not even "provided for by the applicable sectoral regulations." To this he adds that the president also did not justify "in any way the insufficiency or inadequacy of other less harmful measures for the purpose pursued"; and that "said resolution was executed the day after it was issued, with access to the facilities of Club Lanzarote without judicial authorization and against the opposition of the representatives of this entity", who went to the courts both in the contentious way -achieving the annulment of the seizure-, as in the criminal way, with the complaint that gave rise to this cause.
"This is not the object of the process"
"These, and not others, are the elements that, in the opinion of the investigating judge, give rise to the fact that the conduct of the appellant is indicatively constitutive of the crimes of malfeasance and coercion. Such are the facts to which, if applicable, the evidence to be practiced in the oral trial must refer. Therefore, any proceedings relating to the conduct of Club Lanzarote S.A. before the seizure occurred are irrelevant in this respect, since this is not the object of the process", the Prosecutor's Office insists in its response to San Ginés' appeal.
Regarding another of the arguments of his defense, which maintained that in the order that ended the investigation there had been a "surprising accusation" of the crime of coercion, the Public Prosecutor's Office also rejects it. "It is recorded that the appellant was questioned, when testifying before the investigating judge, about the same facts to which the Order of Abbreviated Procedure refers. Therefore, he has been offered in this process the opportunity to defend himself against each and every one of the apparently criminal acts that are attributed to him in said resolution, without causing him defenselessness at any time", concludes the Prosecutor's Office.
For all these reasons, he asks that the appeal be dismissed and the order be confirmed, which is the one that gives way to the presentation of the accusatory writings of the parties and to the subsequent opening of oral trial against the president and against the other three defendants in the case: the secretary of the Cabildo Francisco Perdomo, the former manager of the Insular Water Council, José Juan Hernández Duchemín, and the external lawyer Ignacio Calatayud. The latter was the one who advised San Ginés before and after the seizure, while at the same time he worked for Canal Gestión, which is the company to which the seized plants were handed over.