Anti-Corruption Prosecutor Javier Ródenas has withdrawn this Monday his accusation against two of the defendants in the so-called Operation Jable, which dates back to events that occurred two decades ago, Miguel Ángel Leal and Stephan Jean Balverde, as no evidence of criminal acts was found in their participation in the plot during the trial sessions.
Likewise, the prosecutor has eliminated the criminal offense of illicit association for which he had been accusing the former leader of the Party of Independents of Lanzarote (PIL), Dimas Martín; the former mayor of Arrecife, María Isabel Déniz, the former general secretary of the same city council, Felipe Fernández Camero, and the head of its Technical Office, Juan Rafael Arrocha. Instead, he has now accused them of the crime of fraud against the administration.
This has provoked criticism from the lawyers of Fernández Camero and Déniz, who have denounced a violation of the fundamental right to defense and the accusatory principle "based on a surprising qualification" by the Public Prosecutor's Office.
The lawyer of María Isabel Déniz, José María Calero, has requested, in his defense brief, that the mitigating circumstances of reparation of damage and undue delays be taken into account, subsidiary to the statute of limitations of the facts for which his client is being accused; but, in addition, he has requested that those incriminating evidence "consisting of hetero-incriminating statements of defendants after expressing agreement with the prosecutor's indictment" be declared null and void.
Fernández Camero's lawyer, on the other hand, has even pointed out that in Ródenas' new indictment, "facts that were not the subject of accusation, not even of the order to open the abbreviated procedure" have been added, and has also requested that, in case of conviction, the mitigating circumstances of extraordinary delays and reparation of damage with respect to his client be taken into account.
Prosecutor Ródenas has taken into account, in his final indictment, the undue delays in the procedure, although he considers them as "simple", together with the mitigating circumstance of late confession, which has led him to lower his requests for punishment by one degree.
The rest of the accusations and defenses have adhered to the prosecutor's requests, although in some cases they have urged that the mitigating circumstance of reparation of damage be taken into account for having consigned amounts to combat the damage caused.
Discrepancies
During the session, the experts of the parties have also testified, who have shown discrepancies in what is related to the origin of the profits of María Isabel Déniz, one of the central elements on which the accusations against her are based.
According to the experts of the Central Operative Unit (UCO) of the Civil Guard and the Tax Agency, there are about 400,000 euros of unjustified patrimonial gains on the part of the family of the former mayor of Arrecife, and a series of payments that they consider were made in cash to acquire real estate, vehicles or even naval engines or to pay the salary of the assistant she had at home.
However, for the expert of Déniz's defense, "the approach of the UCO is erroneous" because "it raises a report saying that what it does not find, automatically has an unknown origin", while saying that they have remained on the "surface", without getting to "deepen".
In that sense, there has been much talk in the session of the possible origin of part of that money that the UCO and Hacienda understand is not justified.
According to the defense expert, the accusatory reports did not take into account the allowances that Déniz received in her capacity as an autonomous parliamentarian (between 2003 and 2007), nor "the subsidies received by the Mixed group to which she belonged", funds that its members, he said, had "at their discretion".
"The extract of the account domiciled for the Mixed group has been provided, every month they receive money and every month there are three checks -the same as members of the group-. It is not declared, because when one keeps the money that is assigned to the parliamentary group they spend it at their discretion", he insisted.
The present case investigates whether members of the Arrecife City Council at the beginning of the century received a series of gifts and cash income from the companies Tecmed, then Urbaser, and FCC to rig public tenders.
The trial will continue this Wednesday with the reading of final reports and the last words of the defendants, presumably being seen for sentencing.
