The Las Palmas Court will begin this Monday the trial of the "Operación Jable" against the 16 people accused in an alleged corruption plot that acted two decades ago in the Arrecife City Council, allegedly headed by its mayor, Isabel Déniz, of the PIL, and the then leader of her party, Dimas Martín.
This is the last piece of the well-known "Caso Unión", one of the largest corruption networks uncovered in Lanzarote, which operated in the Arrecife City Council and for which Dimas Martín has already been convicted in other processes, who now faces a request for 13 years in prison, the same sentence that is requested for Déniz.
After the investigation of the case was closed eight years ago, the second section of the Court will put 17 people in the dock from this Monday, including the former head of the Technical Office of the Arrecife City Council Rafael Arrocha, the former municipal secretary Felipe Fernández Camero, the former secretary of the PSOE in Arrecife Miguel Ángel Leal, and representatives of the companies Urbaser, FCC and Gamma Instal.
The case also includes the partners of María Isabel Déniz and Dimas Martín for allegedly profiting from the operations of the plot to which the Prosecutor's Office attributes crimes of bribery, embezzlement, document forgery, prevarication, disclosure of secrets, fraud and activities prohibited to officials and illicit association.
The Public Prosecutor's Office maintains that Dimas Martín, "as the highest leader" of the PIL, and María Isabel Déniz, as mayor of Arrecife, "agreed" between 2001 and 2002 to "obtain funds illegally from various private companies through the City Council", for which they had the "important collaboration" of the secretary and the head of the Technical Office.
The defendants, says the public prosecution, "rigged" tenders to award Urbaser and FCC companies jobs in exchange for cash payments or in the form of "gifts" or presents. In this way, according to the Prosecutor's Office, Urbaser (then called Tecmed) obtained the fraudulent award of a garbage and waste collection contract for 2.1 million per year, for a period of 10 years.
This company obtained two construction contracts without prior bidding for 3.9 million and 2.3 million euros to be paid in 25 years and with an annual fee of 248,836 euros and 168,836 euros, respectively, says the prosecutor, who calculates that the entire operation involved diverting 32.3 million euros from municipal coffers.
In addition, the former head of the Municipal Technical Office and two other defendants, one of them also head of the Technical Office of the Cabildo, Manuel Jesús Isidro Spínola, are accused of creating several companies that carried out "illegal" projects related to both administrations, according to the Prosecutor's Office's indictment.
These companies irregularly benefited from the Urbaser awards and the contract for drafting the project and construction of the Argana Alta municipal sports hall to FCC for 8.7 million, which was awarded by the corporation's plenary session in 2003.
In the first session of the trial, preliminary issues will be resolved and agreements may be reached, according to the Las Palmas Court, which will also announce new changes to the dates of the already scheduled days.
During the investigation of the case, a senior Urbaser official accused in the process Jacinto Álvarez de la Fuente, collaborated to facilitate the investigation, acknowledged the facts, which helped to discover part of the activities of the plot, according to the Prosecutor's Office, which is asking for a sentence of 10 years and two months in prison.
Déniz also faces 52 years of disqualification (as does Dimas Martín), as well as the payment of more than 600,000 euros for the gifts allegedly received to intervene in the awards to the companies Urbaser and FCC and in the contract revisions.
According to the Prosecutor's Office, Déniz would have received gifts and cash payments from Urbaser, a trip to Kenya with another investigated party, Felipe Fernández Camero, with their respective partners; more than 120,000 euros in cash, a living room furniture, a Rolex watch, a Loewe bag, tickets to the opera, first-class plane tickets and stays in five-star hotels, among other perks.
In addition, the former mayor of Arrecife would have received trips to Marrakech (Morocco) from the company FCC for her and eight members of her family, which generated an expense of 16,674 euros.
The former secretary of the Arrecife City Council Felipe Fernández Camero, who was in charge of legally advising the City Council and was part of the contracting table, faces a sentence of 11 years and six months in prison, as well as 18 years of disqualification, while for the head of the Technical Office, 20 years and six months are requested, the highest penalty.
For the former head of the PSOE in Arrecife, Miguel Ángel Leal, three years in prison are requested; for the other defendants from the company Urbaser, Andrés Martínez, Francisco Martínez, Stephan Jean Antoine and Santiago Alonso Herreros, sentences of up to 10 years and two months; while the directors of FCC Enrique Astorga and Enrique José Hernández, face four years in prison.
The rest of the defendants related to the companies Gamma Julio Romero, Daniel Hernández Caraballo and Rafael Antonio Corujo, are exposed to fines of 2,220 euros and different periods of disqualification to hold public jobs or positions.
The trial against the 16 defendants of Operation Jable begins this Monday
This is the last piece of the well-known "Caso Unión", one of the largest corruption networks uncovered in Lanzarote, which operated in the Arrecife City Council.
