The trial against the former president of the Cabildo and current spokesman for CC in the opposition, Pedro San Ginés, will begin next Monday and will last for four days - the 16th, 17th, 23rd and 24th - with the testimony of more than 20 witnesses and experts before the Criminal Court Number 3 of Arrecife. One of those experts, Manuel Rebollo Puig, was hired by San Ginés with public funds, when he still held the Presidency, to prepare a report that he later presented for his defense in this case for the seizure of the Montaña Roja desalination plant.
The media expectation that the hearing has aroused, together with the current restrictions due to Covid, has forced the habilitation of an adjoining room where journalists will be able to follow the development of the trial through a closed video circuit - installed expressly for the occasion -, while only three will be able to access the room. In total, more than 20 media professionals had requested accreditation, including journalists from newspapers, radio stations and news agencies; photographers and camera operators from four television stations, one of them Televisión Española.
The hearing will begin with the presentation of preliminary issues, in which the defendants have already stated that they will invoke alleged grounds for annulment to request that the trial not be held. In fact, San Ginés requested that these preliminary issues be resolved in writing and before the hearing, but the magistrate who will judge the case dismissed this request. And it is also unlikely that she will rule at the beginning of the trial, because these issues are usually resolved when the sentence is handed down. And in this case, they repeat arguments that were rejected by the investigating judge and by the Provincial Court.
Then, according to the established calendar, the three defendants will be questioned, for whom 12 years of disqualification are requested for crimes of prevarication. The first to do so will be Pedro San Ginés himself, and then the former secretary of the Cabildo, Francisco Perdomo, and the former manager of the Insular Water Council, José Juan Hernández Duchemín.
The session on the 16th will end with the testimony of the first witnesses, who are agents of the Local Police of Yaiza and the Civil Guard. Their summons has been requested by the popular accusation, exercised by the former councilors of Podemos in the Cabildo, Carlos Meca and Pablo Ramírez. The agents witnessed the moment in which a locksmith broke the padlock of the Club Lanzarote facilities, to snatch this company's desalination plant and hand it over to Canal Gestión, complying with an order from Pedro San Ginés.
The measure, which was executed without judicial authorization and did not even have written reports to support it, was later annulled by the Courts, which concluded that it was "extreme", "burdensome" and "disproportionate". In fact, all that existed when San Ginés ordered this precautionary measure was a sanctioning file that had been opened that same day, for three minor offenses and one less serious offense, and that only proposed a sanction of 7,800 euros.
In addition to winning that battle in the contentious-administrative channel, Club Lanzarote also filed a complaint, which is what gave rise to this case. However, although throughout the instruction he exercised the private prosecution, the company ended up withdrawing, after signing an agreement with San Ginés, who negotiated and signed it on behalf of the institution.
According to that agreement, Club continued - and continues to this day - with the management of its plants, while the former president committed himself, both on behalf of the Insular Council and the Government of the Canary Islands, to file all the files that he opened and that he managed to get the regional Executive to open to the company after this issue reached the courts. Not even the sanction foreseen in the only file that had been opened before the seizure was imposed.
Now, despite the fact that they withdrew from this procedure as prosecution, two representatives of Club Lanzarote will testify as witnesses during the trial, also at the request of the popular prosecution. The first, the lawyer Pedro Soriano, will do so the following day, Tuesday the 17th; while Joaquín Cañada will testify in the session scheduled for the Monday of the following week, the 23rd. And in both cases, their testimony is especially important for this trial, since it was this company that initiated the procedure, as a victim of the investigated crimes.
In its complaint, Club Lanzarote maintained that the manager of the Consortium, Domingo Pérez Callero, the lawyer Ignacio Calatayud and "unidentified agents" of the Local Police of Yaiza "appeared at the facilities" of the desalination plant and "despite being warned of the illegality of their action, lacking judicial authorization, entered the facilities violently entering, forcing their locks, subsequently changing the cylinders of the entrance doors to the facilities, which were taken over by the entity Canal Gestión Lanzarote, using the de facto route violently on things".
Together with the two representatives of Club Lanzarote, three workers of this same company, José Miguel Andrés García, José Luis Garzón González and Rafael Soto Betancort, as well as the Cabildo's notifier José Manuel Fuentes Cabrera and the locksmith who intervened, José Rodríguez Rivera, will also testify at the request of the prosecution.
Canal Gestión was the one who called the locksmith
In their first statements during the investigation, all the defendants - among whom were also Domingo Pérez and the lawyer Ignacio Calatayud - assured that they did not give the orders during the material execution of the seizure. What was clear is that it was Canal Gestión - the company benefited from this seizure - who called the locksmith, because this was confirmed by the then manager of the company, Gerardo Díaz. However, Díaz did not specify who asked him to call that locksmith and no one assumed having given him the order to break the padlock.
Gerardo Díaz himself - who two years later was arrested in a national corruption case, which San Ginés highlighted this week that has just been filed - will have to testify as a witness on the 17th. In his statement of qualification, the popular accusation underlined the "huge profits" obtained by this company, which during the year that it managed the seized plants and "until justice put an end to such nonsense, invoiced one billion liters of water more".
"The accumulation of irregularities to which Mr. San Ginés lends himself to favor the business of Canal Gestión Lanzarote S.A.U. has been revealed by the TSJC from its origin, that is, from the celebration of the negotiated tender with publicity by which the management of the integral water cycle is granted to the subsidiary of Canal Isabel II", underlines the indictment, in reference to a ruling that ordered the revision of the award of that contract, considering it proven that the specifications were "altered" "for the benefit" of Canal. That ruling, to this day, remains unenforced.
In addition, the former CC councilor Soraya Brito, who is currently a councilor in Haría and has an open file in the party for refusing to break the pact in the municipality, will also testify at the request of the prosecution. When the seizure occurred, Brito was vice-president of the Insular Water Council and had delegated powers. However, San Ginés withdrew them and assumed them personally just before adopting this measure. Brito will testify as a witness next Tuesday, the 17th.
Calatayud, from defendant to "expert"
Another of the statements that will mark the trial will be that of the lawyer Ignacio Catalayud, who was charged in this case and who was pointed out as the "ideologue" of the seizure. Calatayud, who worked for Canal Gestión while advising San Ginés to seize the desalination plant and hand it over to Canal, was dismissed during the investigation by Judge Salvador Alba, who shortly after was convicted of serious crimes in the exercise of his office.
As a result of that decision, not shared by the Prosecutor's Office or by the investigating judge, the Public Prosecutor's Office has already stated that without being able to formulate an accusation against Calatayud, it could not do so against the rest either, since Pedro San Ginés hides behind him to justify his actions. However, the prosecutor did support that the trial should continue with the popular accusation, and even asked for the statement of Ignacio Calatayud during the hearing.
In addition to the Prosecutor's Office, the popular accusation and San Ginés himself had also requested that Calatayud be summoned as a witness. However, in the scheduling of the trial it appears that he will testify as an expert, although the popular accusation has requested that it be corrected.
The same is true of three other people, in this case cited at the request of San Ginés' defense, who appear in the scheduling of the trial as experts, when their statement was requested as witnesses. Two are the managers of the Insular Water Consortium and the Insular Water Council during the seizure, Domingo Pérez and Erik Martín, and the other is the Deputy of the Common, Jerónimo Saavedra.
With the statement of Saavedra, the defense of San Ginés will again put on the table the warnings that he claims to have received about the situation in Montaña Roja, where Club Lanzarote invoiced the water to the neighbors with its own rates, since it was in charge of providing the service because that partial plan had not been received by the administration. Even, the former president went so far as to assure later that he adopted this measure to avoid the "shortage" in the area.
In this regard, the Provincial Court, when it ordered to continue this criminal case against San Ginés, stressed that before carrying out the seizure, not even the necessary requirements had been made to the company to justify this decision, nor had the legal channels been followed to regularize what was necessary.
At the request of the defense of Pedro San Ginés, a channel guard of the Insular Water Council, José Juan Hernández Mendez (whose statement was also requested by the prosecution); one of the bankruptcy administrators of Inalsa, Pedro Martín Toledo, and the former Secretary of the Presidency of the Government of the Canary Islands, Ceferino Marrero Fariña, will also testify as witnesses.
The list of witnesses is completed with the former Minister of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Water of the Canary Islands Government Narvay Quintero, who held the position between 2015 and 2019. That is, when the seizure had already occurred and had even been annulled by the Courts, and when at the request of the Cabildo presided over by San Ginés, the regional Executive began to open sanctioning files to Club Lanzarote.
Four experts, one paid with public funds from the Consortium
The trial is scheduled to end on Tuesday the 24th with the testimony of the experts. In total, in addition to the four that are pending clarification if they will finally do so as witnesses or as experts, there are eight summoned. The four that had been officially requested as experts are the professors of Law Manuel Rebollo Puig, Luciano Parejo and Germán Fernández Farreres, and a technician of the Cabildo who has served as auditor in the institution, Hernán Lorenzo Hormiga.
In the case of Luciano Parejo, whose statement has been requested by the popular accusation, he was hired by Club Lanzarote at the beginning of this lawsuit, to prepare a report in which he denied that the desalination plant was of public domain, as Pedro San Ginés maintained.
Regarding Rebollo Puig, who is the only expert actually requested by San Ginés' defense, he was hired by the Water Consortium shortly after his indictment in this case. In fact, the then councilors of Podemos denounced an alleged crime of embezzlement of public funds, since they maintained that the report had "no public utility" and was commissioned "exclusively for the criminal procedure" against San Ginés. In addition to this report commissioned to Manuel Rebollo, who will now testify in defense of the former president, Carlos Meca warned then that another one had also been commissioned to Blanca Lozano Cutanda -who has also been an expert of Juan Francisco Rosa-, in this case through the Insular Water Council and for an amount of more than 17,500 euros. In her case, there is no record of her summons to testify, although San Ginés did provide her report - also paid with public funds - for his defense in this case.
Once the statements of the experts have concluded, on the same day 24 the trial is scheduled to end, after both the popular accusation and the defenses present their final conclusions. In addition, at that time the Public Prosecutor's Office could also intervene. Afterwards, the case will be seen for sentencing.
