The spokesman of the Unified Association of the Civil Guard (AUGC) in the Canary Islands, Juan Couce, stated this Wednesday in the morning show Buenos días Lanzarote that the union will appear as a private prosecution in the Cuarteles case, in which alleged irregularities in the awarding of contracts for the rehabilitation and painting of thirteen Civil Guard barracks are being investigated. The businessman from Lanzarote Ángel Ramón Tejera, known as "Mon", is accused in the case.
The presiding judge of the Court of Instruction number 3 of Madrid attributes to Ramón Tejera the possible crimes of bribery, continued forgery in an official document and embezzlement. Along with him, the former head of the Civil Guard Command of Ávila, Carlos Alonso Rodríguez, Lieutenant General Pedro Vázquez Jarava and a self-employed worker remain under investigation and charged with the same crimes.
On April 17, the aforementioned Court of Madrid that is handling the case has summoned the four defendants to "a hearing". "We hope that our lawyers can already participate in it and ask the questions they deem appropriate," Couce confessed during his radio intervention.
The management and contracting of the renovation works in the barracks "is usually the responsibility of the chief support commanders. So here there could be that, some commander by action or omission, did not follow their obligations or gave these works and did not say anything because another superior chief (Lieutenant General Vázquez Jarava) ordered them," he explains.
For the spokesman of the Unified Association of the Civil Guard (AUGC) in the Canary Islands, it is "important to know the organization chart of the Civil Guard. That the top chief (Vázquez Jarava) gets involved in such a way that he tells him to give the work to this man (Ramón Tejera) because he is going to test a waterproofing system, as has been reported in the press, it may even be understandable that a chief gives it to him, but of course, not without checking if that work has been done or seeing that that work has defects," Juan Couce reflects.
In this sense, he points out that, perhaps, it would be necessary to take "another series of measures that perhaps have not been taken. I cannot tell you because we do not yet have access to the documentation, that there could be more people involved in this investigation."
"There is a lot to talk about here," says the spokesman of the Unified Association of the Civil Guard (AUGC) in the Canary Islands, Juan Couce
"According to what is being seen, there are more people involved from the senior positions than from the base, and the pyramid of the Civil Guard has the fewest senior positions. What we trust is that with the new Law 2/23 regulating the protection of people who report on regulatory infringements and the fight against corruption. We hope that it will be effective and that within the Civil Guard it can be accessed, that is, that any person who reports corruption has protection because today any agent who reports it is very difficult for that report to be filed."
These cases of alleged corruption, "do not mean that all the rest of us are corrupt, far from it." Regarding the relationship of the contractor Ángel Ramón Tejera with the current head of the Tenerife Command, Juan Couce reveals that "I was personally assigned to Costa Teguise in Lanzarote at the beginning of the century and I coincided with Lieutenant Colonel La Fuente, who is the current head of the Tenerife Command, as well as with Ángel Ramón."
