The businessman Antonio Curbelo Robayna, linked to Juan Francisco Rosa, has filed a complaint with the Provincial Prosecutor's Office of Las Palmas against the nine wineries of La Geria, for alleged crimes against the environment. The complaint occurred shortly after the Justice ordered the precautionary closure of the Stratvs winery, within the framework of the criminal case opened in the Court of Instruction Number 5 of Arrecife.
Curbelo Robayna has been a partner, director or administrator in several companies together with Juan Francisco Rosa, owner of Stratvs, and with this he intends to argue that the rest of the wineries are in a similar situation regarding the treatment of wastewater (which is only one of the facts for which the Stratvs winery is being investigated).
This is not the first time that certain businessmen have responded to their judicial or legal problems by denouncing other facilities. In 2009, they announced a cascade of complaints against licenses that had not been appealed at the time by the Cabildo, especially residential ones, to denounce an alleged double standard. Some of the lawsuits they filed were later withdrawn by themselves, as they affected some of the complainants themselves.
In addition, those businessmen even acted against the Tourist Centers, the emblem of the island, even suggesting that they should be closed for lacking an opening license.
"Unusual measures"
After undertaking these actions, five businessmen, including Juan Francisco Rosa and Antonio Curbelo, signed a statement justifying this attitude. "A few weeks ago, a group of businessmen from different sectors of the island initiated a series of unusual and exceptional measures that we who subscribe to this article support," they stated. In that writing, they also assured that these actions, which were harshly contested from public administrations, did not imply "coercion or a request for general amnesty."
"The biggest victims of this situation are the businessmen, who live in tremendous uncertainty under the threat of demolition of our hotels or promotions, or of demanding compensation in exchange for legalizing what exists," they defended in that writing.
Five years later, and in the midst of a criminal case that investigates the construction and operation of the Stratvs winery for serious crimes, a similar situation is repeated and Antonio Curbelo Robayna has gone to the Prosecutor's Office to denounce the rest of the wineries of La Geria, intending to argue that they are in a similar situation.
However, it should be remembered that in the case of Stratvs, not only are possible spills being investigated, but also crimes against Land Management and Urban Planning, against Historical Heritage; crimes against the Public Administration and the crime of documentary falsification, as well as crimes against heritage and socio-economic order.
According to the investigation, Rosa obtained authorization to rehabilitate a pre-existing construction, with heritage value, and build a warehouse of about 900 square meters. However, what he did was demolish that construction and build a new, larger one, and build a total of about 12,000 square meters, where the winery, the restaurant, the store, the terrace and other facilities are located today, all on protected land in La Geria.
In addition, according to a complainant, part of the winery was built on land that did not even belong to Juan Francisco Rosa, but to the Negrín family. "It has been intended to create the appearance that Rosa Marrero, through her companies, is the owner of the land on which the construction was carried out, a circumstance that is particularly relevant in the present case, not only because there are legitimate owners who have appeared as injured parties, but because (Juan Francisco Rosa) has not justified to this day the slightest ownership over the registry property" on which the winery is based, the judge argued in the order in which she ordered the precautionary closure of the winery.
Together also to request the expiration of the BIC
The names of Juan Francisco Rosa and Antonio Curbelo Robayna also came together years ago to demand that the file to declare La Geria as an Asset of Cultural Interest (BIC) be declared expired. This file was initiated under the presidency of Manuela Armas in the Cabildo of Lanzarote in 2009.
Four years later, the current president of the Cabildo, Pedro San Ginés, forwarded to the Government of the Canary Islands three complaints of default that had been filed, two of them by Rosa and Curbelo.
Finally, understanding that the deadline for processing that file had been exceeded, the regional Executive proposed the expiration and archiving of the procedure, thus avoiding the declaration of this space as a BIC.
