Almost a year after the Superior Court of Justice of the Canary Islands ordered the Stratvs case to be divided into two separate parts, the case is once again entering the final stretch to go to trial. During the last month, all the defendants have already presented their defense briefs, after the Investigating Court finished separating the case into two proceedings.
It was the immunity of the mayor of Yaiza, Gladys Acuña, that caused the entire case to pass to the TSJC, when she became a regional deputy. However, the Court then decided, specifically in November 2015, to separate it into two parts and only assume the related facts that were directly related to Acuña's intervention. Thus, along with her, a dozen defendants related to those facts will be in the dock, including all the councilors who were part of the government board in 2008, when the activity license was granted to Stratvs, while the rest will answer before the Provincial Court, which was initially responsible for judging the case.
In those defense briefs that have already reached the TSJC, the majority of the accused in this piece are limited to showing their disagreement with the classification of the Prosecutor's Office and the private and popular accusations, while the businessman Juan Francisco Rosa and Gladys Acuña do show what their defense arguments will be.
No crime, "as far as our client is concerned"
In the case of Acuña, she has presented the most extensive brief to the TSJC, with 28 pages in total, in which she refutes the charges for which the Public Prosecutor accuses her. "As far as our client is concerned, the facts judged are not constitutive of any criminal offense," says her defense, which does not argue that crimes have not existed, but that Acuña was not involved.
For his part, Juan Francisco Rosa's defense has presented a 17-page brief, signed by the lawyer José Antonio Choclán Montalvo, who, among others, represents Rita Barberá, one of the leaders of Operation Púnica, David Marjaliza, and has also been Francisco Correa's lawyer in the Gürtel case. In his defense brief, Choclán points out that this accusation is based on a conversation intercepted by the UCO within the Unión case, and that it was incorporated into the Stratvs case. In that conversation, Juan Francisco Rosa spoke with the then councilor of Yaiza, Leonardo Rodríguez, about the Governing Board that was going to be held the next day and in which the granting of the activity license to Stratvs was going to be debated.
Rosa's request for "help", a "mere courtesy"
"It's the opening, you know, to legalize that once and for all. I have everything, the issue of the Cabildo, everything in order, everything delivered. And all that's missing is your opening, you know," Rosa said in that conversation. However, according to the businessman, it is "absolutely untrue" that with those words he intended to "influence" the councilman. After reproducing a part of the transcript of that conversation, his lawyer points out that there is "not the slightest comment about him helping to obtain that license, or influencing his decision or that of the other members of the Governing Board".
Next, and after denying that he asked the councilman for "help", as the Public Prosecutor pointed out, the lawyer adds that "the expression 'help' was used in that same conversation but referred to a meeting that Leonardo Rodríguez was going to have the next day with a person to whom Juan Francisco Rosa had sold some plots in the past and who had had problems with the first occupation license. Nothing to do therefore with the license for the winery that is the object of this procedure", concludes the lawyer.
After pointing out that this "help" was not requested for the Stratvs license, but for another, the lawyer adds: "He simply states 'see if you can help him', in a tone of mere courtesy and without any intention of influencing Mr. Rodríguez". Regarding the conversation about Stratvs, his lawyer insists that he only "inquired" about the processing of the activity license, "without trying to influence in any way".
"Some unfavorable reports from Public Health"
In addition to ensuring that he "scrupulously followed the course marked by administrative regulations" to obtain the activity license, Rosa's defense dedicates most of the brief to arguing that the Stratvs winery is legal, despite the fact that the PIOT does not allow this installation on that land and despite the fact that he built a macro complex of 12,000 square meters, when he only had a license to restore a protected house (which he actually demolished and replaced with a larger one) and for a warehouse winery of 900 meters.
Regarding the polluting spills, although they will be judged in the other case, Rosa also refers to them in his brief, since the investigating judge and the Prosecutor's Office maintain that they should have been grounds for denying that activity license. In this regard, the businessman's lawyer acknowledges that "some unfavorable reports had been issued by the General Directorate of Public Health", but omitting that what those reports did was warn of high levels of contamination in the winery's spills.
Next, the lawyer refers to other favorable Health reports that he considers have been "omitted" by the Prosecutor's Office. However, the reports he lists do not refer to the spills, but to sanitary inspections related to the production, bottling and storage of wine, in order to register in the General Sanitary Registry of Food.
The mayor points to the technicians to defend her intervention
For her part, the mayor is accused of having approved the activity license of the winery in December 2008 and, subsequently, of not having adopted measures against the winery and the rest of the facilities, despite having knowledge of the irregularities. Regarding the first, Acuña's defense argues that she voted in favor of granting that license in a Governing Board because she had favorable reports from two technicians of the Consistory - the former secretary Vicente Bartolomé Fuentes and the engineer Andrés Morales, also accused in the case - and with another report and a favorable resolution from the Cabildo of Lanzarote. That report was issued by another defendant in the Stratvs case, the Cabildo technician Manuel Jesús Spínola, and the resolution was signed by the then Minister of Classified Activities, Miguel Ángel Leal.
"Having all the mandatory reports in a favorable sense, the agreement of the local Governing Board could not be other than the one adopted", says the mayor's defense. In that Board, it was approved to grant the license but in a "conditional" way. Among other things, it was established that the activity could not begin to be exercised "without first making a verification visit by the competent municipal technicians, regarding the suitability of the premises to the project presented". However, the winery had already been inaugurated with an official party seven months before and had been in operation for almost another year. In addition, after the permit was granted, there is no record in the case that any "verification visit" was carried out by the City Council.
Regarding the "inactivity" of which the Prosecutor's Office accuses her, the mayor argues that she only became aware of the irregularities five years after granting that activity license, when in July 2013 she went to testify as an accused before the investigating Court of the Stratvs case.
From there, she assures that she acted "with the utmost diligence, within the limitation of human, technical and legal resources of the Yaiza City Council, ordering the processing of the corresponding administrative files, with the guarantees required by current regulations". In total, since then the City Council has opened up to four different files to Stratvs: one "for the development of the restaurant activity", another "for the activity of a store with a tasting area", another "for the winery activity without the mandatory license" and one more "for the main activity of the winery and its complementary activities".
However, it only managed to seal off the restaurant, according to Acuña, due to a lack of technical means in the City Council to resolve those files. Finally, it was the investigating Court itself that, in December 2013, ordered the closure of all the facilities, in a decision that was later endorsed by the Provincial Court, which rejected the appeal presented by Juan Francisco Rosa against that precautionary measure.
