The former secretary of the Yaiza Town Hall, Vicente Bartolomé Fuentes, has avoided having to sit in the dock again in the second Stratvs trial due to an error in the summonses. Bartolomé Fuentes was already tried and convicted in the first part of the case, but the popular accusation exercised by Urban Transparency charged him with other facts that had to be resolved in this second hearing.
However, he has not been summoned by the Provincial Court and the lawyer of TU has decided to resign, because otherwise it would have forced the suspension of the trial, which has been suffering delays for years and has ten other defendants.
Precisely one of the reasons that delayed this case is what has given rise to this error, since initially the Stratvs case was a single procedure, until it had to be separated into two parts when the former mayor of Yaiza, Gladys Acuña, became a person with parliamentary immunity when she became a regional parliamentarian in the last legislature. At that time, the Superior Court of Justice of the Canary Islands agreed that it would only be responsible for judging the facts related to Acuña, while the rest would remain in charge of the Provincial Court.
This forced the division of the case when the accusation documents against 17 people had already been presented. Thus, the first trial was directed against 10 of them, and only on the facts that were related to the intervention of Gladys Acuña, that is, with the granting of the classified activity license to the winery. The rest of the facts are those that have begun to be judged this Tuesday, in a hearing in which three defendants repeat for other charges (Juan Francisco Rosa himself, the former mayor of Yaiza José Francisco Reyes and the former Councilor for Urban Planning José Antonio Rodríguez), but in which Vicente Bartolomé Fuentes should also be present.
An alleged fraud in the collection of taxes from Rosa
The difference in the case of the former secretary is that the Prosecutor's Office only filed charges against him for the events that had already been judged. However, the popular accusation also charged him with a crime of fraud against the administration, related to the fees and taxes that the Yaiza Town Hall charged Juan Francisco Rosa, and which it understands did not correspond to what the businessman should have actually paid.
Although the Prosecutor's Office did not accuse him of this crime, the fact that it was part of the qualification document of Urban Transparency should have led to him also being in this trial. In fact, one of the ten defendants, the former Director General of Urban Planning of the Government of the Canary Islands, Juan César Muñoz Sosa, has only been accused by the popular accusation and has sat this Tuesday in the dock.
As for Bartolomé Fuentes, the Prosecutor's Office accused him of his intervention in the granting of the activity license, for which he was already convicted in the first Stratvs trial. Regarding the building permit granted under the Mayoralty of Reyes, which is one of the facts that are being judged now, it so happens that the former secretary had reported against it, despite the fact that he later gave the green light to the activity license. That is why the Public Prosecutor had not asked for him to be in this second trial, although the popular accusation had detected other allegedly criminal acts for which he will finally not be judged.
