The last piece of the Montecarlo case already has a new date. The First Section of the Court has set it to start in January 2024, specifically on the 22nd, 23rd, 24th, 25th, 26th, 29th, 30th and 31st, and in February on the 1st, 2nd, 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th. The sessions will be held in the courts of Arrecife and in the City of Justice of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.
As will be recalled, this trial was to have been held in January of this year, but the strike by the lawyers of the administration of justice forced its suspension.
This last piece of the Montecarlo case investigates allegedly illegal payments for services not provided to the company Tunera Producciones. Eleven people will be in the dock, for alleged crimes of embezzlement of public funds, fraud against the administration, administrative prevarication and document forgery.
For all of them, the Prosecutor's Office requests, according to the indictment to which this newspaper has had access, between three and six years in prison, the payment of fines and the possible return to the City Council of the money allegedly looted from the public coffers of the capital.
Among the accused is José Montelongo (PSOE), former mayor of Arrecife and Councilor of Finance at the time of the events. Next to him will be the former auditor of Arrecife, Carlos Sáenz.
The rest of the accused are former councilors Eduardo Lasso (PIL), Isabel Martinón (PNL), Víctor Sanginés (PSOE) and former councilor Lorenzo Lemaur (PP), the businessman and owner of Tunera Producciones Eduardo Ferrer and several City Council workers: José Nieves Caraballo, Miguel Ángel Leal, Blas Antonio Cedrés and Francisco Hernández Betancort.
The Prosecutor's Office document states that between 2009 and 2012, the then auditor Carlos Sáenz, taking advantage of his position in the municipal corporation, "colluded" with the owner of Tunera Producciones for the "illegal obtaining of public funds" from the clinic. In some cases, through the payment of public funds for services "that were never provided."
One of the examples of this alleged modus operandi described by the Prosecutor's Office dates back to 2010, when the company received 63,000 euros to carry out a study of conclusions of the Project to Support the development of the actions and programs of the socio-cultural centers of the city. A job that, according to the indictment, Tunera never provided.
In cases where the company did provide the service, the Prosecutor's Office detected that the City Council violated the public procurement regulations. The municipal corporation awarded the contracts in a "direct and arbitrary" manner when it should have put them out to public tender. Through this mechanism, the company obtained in 2009 more than 320,000 euros of public money through different invoices within the framework of the 2009 Malpaís Festival.
