The Director of Works and Exploitation of Urbaser, Francisco José Martínez, was arrested this Tuesday in Madrid by UCO agents, thus joining the list of senior officials of this company who have been arrested as a result of Operation "Jable", which began on April 19. Thus, the "Unión" case in which that police operation was framed makes a new attack, after the latest arrests registered in the month of June.
At that time, two other senior Urbaser executives, Manuel Andrés Martínez and Santiago Alonso, were arrested in Madrid, who were later released on charges, charged with alleged crimes of bribery and alteration of tenders, in relation to the contract that the Arrecife City Council signed during the mayorship of María Isabel Déniz for the cleaning of the capital.
Two months earlier, when Operation "Jable" broke out, the former mayor and the head of the Technical Office, Rafael Arrocha, as well as the manager of Urbaser in Lanzarote, Jacinto Álvarez, and another employee of this company in Madrid, Stephani Jean Valverde, had been arrested in connection with these events.
Key documentation
In addition to several homes, the Urbaser headquarters in Lanzarote was searched that day, as well as a kind of "clandestine" warehouse that was located by UCO agents, and from which they took dozens of boxes with information from the company. A diary of Jacinto Álvarez was also located, in which he noted the alleged bribes that he had given to María Isabel Déniz and other politicians on the island for years, in the form of all kinds of gifts, including trips, designer bags and a Rolex.
After his arrest, Álvarez confessed to some of the events with which he is charged and, supposedly, would have implicated his hierarchical superiors in the company, claiming that he was following orders. In fact, when Manuel Andrés Martínez and Santiago Alonso were arrested, the judge subjected them to a confrontation with the former manager, who had to return to the Arrecife Courts.
Jacinto Álvarez spent almost a month and a half in provisional prison after his arrest and, shortly after being released on charges, he was fired from the company. Although he filed a complaint for unfair dismissal, a few days ago the ruling sided with Urbaser, considering that some of the alleged irregularities committed by the former manager had been proven. And it is that, among other things, several workers declared during the trial that Álvarez forced them to request salary advances that he actually kept, compensating them later with the payment of overtime that they did not really work, and that in the working hours that they had to dedicate to the cleaning of Arrecife he sent them to do different jobs at his private home.