The Supreme Court dismisses the case for prevarication against CC Senator Fernando Clavijo

The Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court has dismissed the case against the general secretary of the Canarian Coalition and senator, Fernando Clavijo, considering that there are no indications of a continuing crime of administrative prevarication when he was mayor of San Cristóbal de La Laguna (Tenerife), known as the Reparos case.

The Supreme Court has made this decision after analyzing the reasoned statement sent by the head of the Investigating Court No. 4 of San Cristóbal de La Laguna, which indicated that Clavijo, between 2011 and 2014, issued more than a hundred decrees lifting the objections of the General Intervention contrary to the extensions and continuity of public service contracts.

The court concludes that the facts contained therein do not constitute a crime because it understands that the resolutions adopted by the then mayor (almost a hundred), although they may be irregular, were not arbitrary.

"The sum of irregular resolutions does not turn into prevarication what, considered in isolation, is nothing more than an irregularity," he argues.

The resolutions analyzed, the sentence adds, "may be irregular; but not grossly illegal or dictated by interests other than the public or general interests of a corporation and with disdain or indifference to legality."

"It would not be understood in that case that such repeated conduct, so done in the light without dissimulation or concealment, had not been reported until several years later, despite the obligation that governs any official to report public crimes," the Chamber observes.

In its opinion, "it would not be correct to project the label of prevaricator to a possible dereliction, neglect, disorder or bad governance for not articulating measures to alleviate the alleged situation of scarcity of resources that, in the version of the defense, prevented addressing with the necessary agility the essential procedures for an orderly and effective management."

It also highlights that the action of the investigated "never obeyed his own initiative", but rather to a proposal from a body of the corporation that made see the reasons -more or less founded-, and with normative references that, in his opinion, made it appropriate to reject the objection of the Intervention.

Thus, it disagrees with the thesis of the accusations and Instructor, who maintained that in the City Council a systematic and institutionalized way of acting had been implemented that violated the contracting procedures by the expedient of extending or giving continuity, regardless of legal provisions.

Clavijo's defense argued for its part that what was being pursued was to avoid the interruption of the provision, which would have caused damages, of different entity depending on the object of the contract, for the corporation, the municipality and the citizens.