The trial for the alleged fraud in the sale of a plot of land in the Rambla Medular of Arrecife will finally extend for two more sessions, after two turbulent days in which even the defendants have not yet testified.
The two days that were scheduled have focused on the statement of the complainant, several witnesses and experts, and have been marked by continuous calls to order by the magistrate presiding over the court, especially with one of the defense lawyers. And it is that although she is intervening in the trial as a lawyer for one of the defendants, she is in turn the main defendant.
This has led to constant personal allusions during her interrogations, both with a witness and with an expert and, especially, with the complainant. “Supposedly not. You know I paid you. You set the commission and the price of the land, and I gave it to you,” the alleged victim responded, when questioned by the woman she reported.
According to his statement, the lawyer Carmen del Rocío García García was the one who “deceived” him into acquiring a plot of land 16 years ago, making him believe that he was acquiring another adjacent one. Later, he discovered that the land he had bought had actually been another, expropriated years before by the City Council.
“He told me that his wife was handling it, that she would advise me”
Along with the lawyer is her partner, Raúl Delgado Díaz, who had a “friendly relationship” with the complainant and was the one who told him about that land. “He contacted me because he knew that I wanted to buy a plot of land, and he told me that he had one in the Rambla Medular. He told me that he was in charge of the sale and that his wife was handling it, that she would advise me,” Francisco Alemán has stated.
According to what he stated in the first session held this Tuesday, both accompanied him up to three times to see the land that he was supposedly going to buy. As for the sellers, five siblings who are also being prosecuted, he met them at the notary's office, along with their mother, who was the eighth defendant in the case, but died before the trial.
Thus, finally there are seven people prosecuted, although one of them does not sit in the dock, but next to the defense lawyers. And it is that Carmen García has her own lawyer -who was Dimas Martín's lawyer for years, Manuel González Peeters-, but in turn she acts as a lawyer for her partner, Raúl Delgado.
This double condition of “lawyer-lawyer” has been repeatedly underlined by the president of the Chamber. “She is defending herself and not her client,” he has warned, interrupting one of her interrogations. In another, he has even asked her to act “as the professional she is” and not as an accused, when she had become embroiled in a heated debate with one of the experts, whom she knew personally. “We are not going to allow this,” the judge has reiterated.
“You put your cell phone through my house window a couple of times”
Along with the complainant, on Tuesday the owner of the plot that Francisco Alemán believed he was buying also testified as a witness, and with whom he ended up in court when he tried to take possession of that land. “He broke my plants,” the witness declared during the trial, coinciding with the statement of the complainant, who explained that the first thing he did was “remove plants and weeds” that were on the land.
The neighbor then sought legal advice and, according to what he has pointed out, ended up resorting to the same lawyer, Carmen García, who “asked for the papers,” but then told him that she could not represent him, because she defended the other party.
He even insinuated that the lawyer could have entered his home to obtain more documentation. “I thought she had gotten into my house a couple of times. I thought it had been you. You put your cell phone through my house window a couple of times, which I saw,” the witness responded, after the lawyer asked him if he had given papers to Francisco Alemán.
Precisely one of the points that must be resolved in the trial is whether the alleged victim really knew what he was buying, or if the lawyer hid documents that she already had in her possession. In fact, the complainant maintains that when he began to distrust and decided to renounce her services, demanding the complete file, she tried to “remove four documents” before giving it to him, telling him that they were going to “harm” him.
When demanding them and reading them, he affirms that he discovered that the land that he really bought had been expropriated in 1990 by the City Council, precisely to build the Rambla Medular. “Even a layman in the matter knew it by seeing those documents, and she had everything from the beginning,” he has pointed out in his statement.
“Some doubts” before the purchase
Alemán has admitted that before the purchase he had “some doubts”, because in the farm next door there was a house with a window and a door that faced his supposed plot. “Carmen told me that nobody could have a door to another private land,” he added. And he has also pointed out that the neighbor with whom he later ended up litigating -and who won the trial-, warned him “not to buy that land”, because it was “a garden of the City Council.”
However, he has pointed out that he went to consult the City Council and they told him no, so he continued with the purchase. Regarding the commission that he agreed with the lawyer -which he claims was 60,000 euros, for the purchase of a plot for 119,400 euros-, he explained that after the purchase he only paid her 50,000, leaving the rest pending, in case there was “any problem with the neighbors, due to the issue of the door and the window.”
Carmen García denies having received that sum and her lawyer, during the interrogation of Francisco Alemán, emphasized this point, questioning whether a commission of 50% of the value of the land did not seem “excessive” to him. The complainant responded that “it was high”, but that he accepted the price because he thought that part of the Rambla Medular “was going to be an emerging area”, although “in the end it was not like that.”
In the same way, González Peeters asked him why he affirms that he delivered the money for that supposed commission in cash and without a receipt. And Carmen García herself insisted on the same thing, when questioning him later as a lawyer for another defendant. “I am waiting for you to give me the receipts,” the complainant replied. “It was not a payment in black. You had to give me the receipt. You understood it in black,” he added when the lawyer insisted, who asked him if it was usual for his company to make payments “in black.”
“I didn't buy a problem, I bought a plot of land”
When the neighbor took Francisco Alemán to the Courts, he affirms that he was still “not aware" that he had suffered a "deception”, so he continued to count on the same lawyer. They even won the lawsuit in the first instance, after which he claims that he paid her another 6,000 euros. However, later a higher instance annulled that ruling.
From losing that second lawsuit, Antonio Alemán has stated that he only wanted his money back: “I had not bought a problem, I had bought a plot of land.”
In addition, he began to distrust his lawyer, when they agreed to commission an expert report that did not arrive. After contacting personally with the architect they had hired, he told him that they had not given him all the documentation to make the report. “Then I asked Carmen to give me the file, that I didn't want to continue with her.”
That's when, according to his version, Carmen García tried to “hide” four documents that confirmed that he had been a victim of a “deception.” Then he also began to talk to the sellers. “They told me that everything had been organized by Carmen. That she was the one who told them that they had a farm there and that it was legal,” he has pointed out, affirming that at the beginning “he thought that they were also unaware of this matter.”
However, after subsequent conversations that he began to record, and that he has contributed to the trial, he concluded that “they had also participated in the deception.”
According to his statement, one of the sellers told him that they had given his lawyer “from the beginning” the documents that he claims to have known a long time later. In addition, he maintains that he also discovered that Carmen García not only advised him: “The sellers had also paid her, but I found out about that later.”
Among the recordings that the complainant contributed are several with two of the sellers and with his own lawyer, who again tried to challenge them unsuccessfully at the beginning of the trial, alleging that “they have no legal value” and that they are “clandestine.”
A delay that forced to alter the order of the statements
The trial started this Tuesday with almost three hours of delay, first due to a problem at the Gran Canaria airport -which delayed the arrival of the magistrates to the island by just over an hour- and then because previously there were two conformity trials that had been scheduled at the same time, at 9:30. Only half an hour later this one had been set, which ended up starting much later than planned, after the other two were resolved first.
This also led to altering the order of the statements, since one of the witnesses -the real owner of the land- has health problems and depends on a portable machine that was running out of oxygen, after more than three and a half hours of waiting.
In his statement, this witness affirmed that “he knows” that the plot of his neighbors, the Hernández Benasco family, “was expropriated”, and even that he found “excessive the meters that the City Council paid” in his day.
In this regard, the heirs and sellers of the land maintain that a part remained in their possession, which was what they sold to Francisco Alemán, although the witness defended that only “a small triangle” remained, which does not occupy even a third of the surface they sold.
In his case, he also does not have his land registered in the Property Registry, which he affirms that he inherited from his father and his grandfather, who had “the goat pens” there, but he does have “a document from the mayor that said that that had been done with the sweat of his brow.”
Regarding Francisco Alemán, he has pointed out that he met him at the time when he bought the land. And with some contradictions and gaps, he has ended up affirming that he “warned” him about the other family before he formalized the purchase. “He is overwhelming me, he is pressuring me,” he ended up telling Carmen García's lawyer during the interrogation. The lawyer had already been interrupted previously by the judge for the way he addressed the witness, when he stopped his response and vehemently asked him to specify what he warned the complainant about.
As for the defendants, contrary to what is usually the case, they did not testify at the beginning of the trial and were scheduled to do so this Wednesday, but as the statements that remained pending were extended, their interrogation has finally been postponed for a next session, which has been set for next October 20, already in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. In addition, another session has had to be added on the 21st, when the conclusions of the defenses and the Prosecutor's Office and the private prosecution will be presented.
