Officials and technicians from the Treasury, Secretariat, and Intervention of the Arrecife City Council testified as witnesses this Wednesday in the third session of the Montecarlo case trial, and three of them have described “pressure” and “violent” situations with the former Finance Councilor, José Montelongo, and even dismissals from their positions for denouncing or warning of possible irregularities.
One of them was the treasurer, Antonio Cabrera Panasco, another the former secretary, Asenet Padrón, and the third an intervention technician, Mari Carmen Villaverde, who for a time replaced the treasurer in his absence, but ended up being removed from office by Montelongo, according to what she declared. “We had some differences of opinion about some payments that were going to be made and he replaced me with another person”, she stated before the Sixth Section of the Provincial Court.
The first to testify was the person who was and still is the treasurer of the City Council, who denied that José Montelongo acted as a “mediator” between the comptroller and him “due to their bad relationship”, as the former councilor had declared the day before.
In fact, Cabrera Panasco stated that what he found was a “common front” against his criteria. Specifically, he referred to a meeting to which he was summoned with the then mayor, Cándido Reguera, with Montelongo himself and with the person who was the Councilor for Human Resources, Nayra Callero. “It was a very unpleasant, very violent thing”, he recalled.
“They presented me with a list and in the afternoon they brought me another”
At that time, the City Council was going to take advantage of a line of credit approved by the State, so that local administrations could settle old debts with their suppliers, and one of the requirements was that the treasurer confirm that the order of priority was met, that is, that invoices were paid in order of seniority, so as not to leave out those that had preference.
However, he states that what they gave him was a list of the invoices that were going to be recognized, but without clarifying whether those were all that there were, since that information was in the Intervention, but was not recorded in the Treasury. “There was a discussion there, because that issue was not clarified,” he added.
The official has stated that he does not know who prepared that list, but he has indicated that the person who gave it to him was José Montelongo. “He brought me a first list and I told him that this could not be”, he related, pointing out that later they presented him with “up to four or five” different lists. “In the morning they presented me with one and in the afternoon they brought me another”, he questioned, explaining that this led him to issue a report with his warnings.
As he has repeated during the trial, what he was demanding was that they certify that those that appeared on the list were all the invoices that were pending payment.
It was then that the mayor - who was also charged in this case and died during the investigation - and the Finance Councilor, summoned him to that meeting. “They told me to report with what there was and that's it.”
Later, when the following year the City Council requested another credit for a new payment to suppliers, older invoices appeared that were still not paid. “Invoices from 2010 came out, and it is assumed that those were already settled. I was not wrong when I asked them to give me all the invoices,” Cabrera stressed.
“It was a complicated time, there was a lot of tension”
That meeting with Cándido Reguera, José Montelongo and Nayra Callero was held in the office of the person who was then the secretary of the City Council, Asenet Padrón, who also testified this Wednesday as a witness.
“Conflict began to arise. I think I remember that the treasurer was asking them to tell him which invoices were going to go to that Plenary Session. It was a very complicated time, there was a lot of tension,” declared Padrón, who also recounted the circumstances she experienced with the same public officials, and which ended in her dismissal.
At that time, the Prosecutor's Office had already initiated the investigation of this case (which was later divided into several parts), after receiving an anonymous complaint, which could have come from a City Council worker.
The prosecutor then sent a request for documentation to the secretary, relating to the events he was investigating. “I prepared all that documentation, it was sent on time and one day that I was not in the City Council, I was notified that the mayor, the deputy mayor and the councilor for Human Resources had appeared in my office,” recalled the former secretary, adding that later she verified that “many documents were missing”, so she presented a written complaint to the City Council.
“They were very complicated weeks and it ended with my dismissal”, added Padrón, who years later managed to have the courts declare that dismissal null and void. “Nothing appeared, there was nothing, everything appeared at the last minute, when I locate it they enter my office, when I ask for it to be returned the pressure begins,” she added, recalling what happened after the Prosecutor's Office's request for documentation.
The parallel record of invoices in the Intervention
Before, Asenet Padrón had also put an end to a parallel record of invoices that existed in the Intervention. “In 2011 I became aware that there were invoices that were not in the General Registry”, she pointed out, recalling what has already been highlighted in other corruption trials related to the Arrecife City Council, in which Carlos Sáenz has been convicted, among others.
As she explained, she found out because a supplier went to complain, and then she went to the Intervention to ask for explanations, and they confirmed it. “At first I couldn't believe it”, she related. “It was not legal”, “it was a manual registration system, not computerized”, “it was outside of all types of control” and “it had no guarantee whatsoever”, the former secretary responded, detailing that to put the entry date on the invoice, they used “a wheel stamp”.
“I brought it to the attention of the mayor, also with a written statement”, she explained, pointing out that as a result of that, an end was put to that parallel record of invoices that Carlos Sáenz had maintained for years. “We went and all the stamps that were there were removed.”
For his part, the treasurer insisted that when a payment had to be made, they only sent him the payment orders, without the invoices or the file, and that he was not even aware of the invoices that were in the City Council, so he insisted on asking for that certification, before approving the list of those that were going to be taken to the plenary session for their extrajudicial recognition.
In addition, he stressed that the fact that they had to be paid in this way is because there had been “irregularities” in the processing of those invoices, such as skipping the prior procedure, which is to verify that there is budget credit, or not having complied with the established procedure for the award.
“Montelongo was not happy with that”
As for Mari Carmen Villaverde, she explained that she worked in the Intervention, but in an absence of the treasurer she was appointed to temporarily occupy his position. “It was a few days, I don't know if it lasted a week”, she explained, pointing out that “the person who was the Finance Councilor” ended up withdrawing that competence from her ahead of time.
“There was a bad economic situation, there were liquidity problems”, she explained, detailing that in the Treasury an order was kept so that the oldest invoices were paid first. “He was not happy with that”, she added, referring to Montelongo. In fact, when asked by the prosecution, she specified that the comptroller “did not say anything to her”, but that it was directly the councilor.
During Wednesday's session, two Treasury workers also testified, whose testimonies were brief. Both confirmed that only the payment order usually arrived at their department, “signed by the comptroller and by the Finance Councilor”, so they did not have the file to make checks, nor was it their function, thus confirming what was stated by Cabrera Panasco.
“I came to testify as a witness and collaborated with the Prosecutor's Office”
The questioning of Cabrera Panasco was the harshest by the defense lawyers, who were interrupted several times by the magistrate presiding over the Chamber, warning of improper questions. One of them was about whether he was “the anonymous complainant in this case”, to which the judge told him not to answer.
What the treasurer did remember is that he started out as a witness in this procedure. Later, as a result of writings from the defenses, the judge ended up charging him as well, against the criteria of the Public Prosecutor's Office, although all charges against him were later dropped. “I spent five years charged here, when I came to testify as a witness and collaborated with the Prosecutor's Office. In an unusual way, I was charged for five years,” he recalled.
During that period, his condition in this procedure changed, and during the investigation he could no longer testify before the magistrate as a witness. He had done so before before the Prosecutor's Office and has done so again this Wednesday in the trial, in which the defenses have again tried to question his actions, to cast doubt on his testimony.
“I cannot verify, I have to comply with the payment order”, Cabrera Panasco reiterated, who explained that as a result of Operation Unión, the procedure has changed and the invoices also arrive at his department, and not only the final payment order.
“If they sign, they certify that it has been carried out under the agreed conditions”
The treasurer has also been asked about what the signature of a councilor implies on an invoice, after the former councilors of Festivities and Roads and Works accused this Tuesday stated that their signature was only a formality and that they did not make verifications. “When they sign, they are saying that the service has been provided. And not only that it has been provided, but that it complies with what was contracted,” he responded.
In this regard, he pointed out that the signature of the councilor “is not necessary” and that “normally” the technician should sign, but he insisted that “if he signs, he certifies that it has been carried out and under the agreed conditions.”
The lawyers of the former councilors and technicians processed have been reiterating the same question - that if the signature only implies that the service has been provided - and he has responded to all of them in the same way: “That it has been provided, and that it has been provided in accordance with what was contracted. And that it is a market price.”
The former secretary, Asenet Padrón, agreed on the same thing, who also pointed out that the bases for the execution of the budget of the Arrecife City Council expressly state who should sign the invoice, regardless of what the general rule establishes.
Other witnesses
Wednesday's session also included four other witnesses, all of them agents of the National Police, who participated in Operation Montecarlo when Carlos Sáenz was arrested, among others, as well as the search of his home and his office in Arrecife and in the City Council of La Oliva, where he was also an auditor.
All have ratified their reports, including one on the bank movements of Carlos Sáenz, who has already been convicted in three parts of this case (the one in La Oliva, the one in San Bartolomé and the first one that was tried in Arrecife), and in this one he has also confessed to the crimes of prevarication and embezzlement.
The trial will now continue next Monday, May 2, with the testimony of new witnesses. Among them will be the technician Elena Martín, who was going to testify this Wednesday but was finally unable to do so, as the rest of the interrogations were extended. In her case, she issued a report warning of irregularities in the invoices of Inelcon and Señalcon, which are the ones being investigated in this procedure.
