The non-elected senator of the Autonomous Community of the Canary Islands Pedro San Ginés (CC) will sit on Thursday morning in the dock of the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court accused by the Prosecutor's Office and the private prosecution of the crimes of false testimony and false accusation.
San Ginés acquired his status as a privileged defendant with the support of Canarian Coalition and the Popular Party, when he was already being investigated for two different cases and the judicial investigative bodies of Arrecife had agreed to the opening of the oral trial against him.
In one of them, which has finally been archived, the alleged commission of the crimes of fraud against the administration, prevarication, traffic of influences, misappropriation and professional disloyalty was being considered for the hiring of his friend the lawyer Ignacio Calatayud in the Inalsa tender.
The other case, which is the one that will be judged this March 12, San Ginés faces one year and six months in prison. The accusations, brought by the Prosecutor's Office and by the family of the already deceased Lanzarote businessman Antonio González, indicate that San Ginés, as president of the Cabildo de Lanzarote and as CEO of the Art, Culture and Tourism Centers, appeared on the night of Wednesday, November 11, 2009, at the Civil Guard Command in Costa Teguise to file a complaint against Antonio González himself, his company, and other people, accusing him of several crimes.
Antonio González, who was the sole administrator of the company Climafrical, found himself embroiled in a legal battle as a result of that complaint. In addition to the initial complaint, the Public Prosecutor's Office and the private prosecution accuse San Ginés of testifying in July 2011 as a witness, "failing to tell the objective truth" and accusing Antonio González and his company of having committed irregularities. The then president of Lanzarote testified again in October 2019 against Antonio González. The case against the Lanzarote businessman was finally dismissed in November 2019, but he passed away without reaching its definitive archiving.
The holding of this trial takes place after the unelected senator requested its dismissal and initially managed to get the High Court to order the dismissal of the case and its definitive dismissal only three months after having assumed its jurisdiction. A few days earlier, the Supreme Court had dismissed the case in which he was investigated along with lawyer Ignacio Calatayud.
Following the insistence of the Prosecutor's Office and the private prosecution, the Supreme Court decided to reopen the case and recognized that its dismissal was rushed. The Prosecutor's Office insisted in the now admitted appeal that this complaint filed by Pedro San Ginés against Carlos Espino and the contracts of the Tourist Centers with Climafrical was a response to the complaint filed by Espino months earlier and that uncovered the largest political corruption plot in the Canary Islands, the Unión case.
The Criminal Chamber then defended that the evidence against the senator of Coalición Canaria "are far from being able to be branded as extravagant or arbitrary" and points to "partisan interests" in his complaint against Antonio González.
