The parent company of the company that manages water in Lanzarote, Canal Isabel II, has once again been immersed in a macro-case against corruption. The Central Operative Unit (UCO) of the Civil Guard has launched an operation this Wednesday in which dozens of arrests and searches are expected for crimes of embezzlement, money laundering and bribery, according to various national media.
Among the first arrested is the former president of the Community of Madrid and the Madrid public water company, Ignacio González, who was in charge of the entity when the integral water cycle in Lanzarote was awarded to it, in 2013, through a negotiated procedure, after the tender was deserted.
The investigation is being led by the National Court, with the intervention of the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office, and among other things focuses on the alleged payment of commissions and overpricing by Canal Isabel II for the purchase of companies in Brazil and Colombia.
Another wave of arrests in 2015
This new operation adds to the one already carried out by the UCO in February 2015, Operation Tosca, which directly affected Lanzarote. At that time, the then manager of Canal Gestión on the island, Gerardo Díaz, was arrested, although his arrest was related to his time as manager of Hispanagua, another of Canal de Isabel II's subsidiaries.
On the same day that his arrest was carried out, along with that of another ten people, the Civil Guard explained in a statement that "after the analysis of the documentation seized" in other searches carried out in 2014 at the headquarters of Hispanagua in Madrid and in several ministries of Melilla, "the existence of several people who fraudulently managed public funds in connivance with officials, public officials and managers of different companies was detected, vitiating contracting processes and pursuing personal or business interests instead of the general interest".
After his arrest, Gerardo Díaz was released on charges and continued to head Canal Gestión Lanzarote, although months later, in October 2015, he was finally dismissed. At the time, the president of the Cabildo, Pedro San Ginés, together with the mayors of Tías, Tinajo, Teguise and Haría; the managers of the Water Consortium, the Island Water Council and the Security and Emergency Consortium; the CEOs of SPEL and CACT; as well as the president of the Canal Gestión Company Committee signed a letter asking that Gerardo Díaz be kept at the head of the company. The request was not granted, although this did not mean his departure from the parent company, as Canal de Isabel II relocated Díaz to the Financial and Business Development Directorate in Madrid.
In another more recent operation, hand in hand with the Púnica case, the UCO has also investigated this Madrid company. According to the summary of that case, published among others by the newspaper El País, the Government of the Community of Madrid, during the stage of the popular Ignacio González (2012-2015) allegedly used two public companies -Canal de Isabel II and the ICM Informatics Agency- to pay for online improvement campaigns of the image of González himself and his right-hand man and Minister of Justice and Presidency, Salvador Victoria, with money allegedly obtained from "manipulating and inflating" the prices of different contracts.