Andrés Barreto, a member of Alternativa Ciudadana, testified this Monday as a witness in the "Unión" case and ratified the complaint he filed "at the end of 2009 or the beginning of 2010" with the Prosecutor's Office, in which he attached "an invoice that Francisco Rodríguez Batllori had collected from Inalsa." In that complaint, the formation assured that, after carrying out "investigations", "it was not aware of any intervention by Batllori to collect that invoice." That is, he had charged for work allegedly not carried out.
This is how Barreto himself recounted it this Tuesday on Radio Lanzarote, where he explained that he testified before "five lawyers of the people accused in the procedure", who were "a little aggressive." "Although I'm used to it, I was surprised. They try by all means to put you in contradiction with what was reported," he said.
Barreto has assured that the lawyers "were talking about the functioning of the Inalsa organizational chart, but they are totally removed from the reality" of the public water company. In this sense, he assured that they asked him about a person who "was supposedly the Head of Personnel of Inalsa", when in the company "there has never been a Head of Personnel." "One doesn't know whether to laugh or cry," he joked.
Barreto believes that they made this type of comment to "justify the work carried out by Mr. Batllori" in Inalsa. "We are not aware of Batllori's presence at any meeting of the negotiation of the workers' collective agreement, nor of any other management with respect to Inalsa," the former Arrecife councilor ratified, who testified for "two hours of eternal questions and eternal answers."
Although the complaint filed by Alternativa Ciudadana did not mention another invoice that Batllori collected from Arrecife, Barreto did assure that he asked the City Council for "the motivation for the check that was paid to Batllori" in the past legislature. "I don't know if we requested it in writing or not, but we were never given an answer," he stated. In this sense, he assured that "although this issue was not put in the complaint", he did want to emphasize it during his statement, especially after reading the statements that Batllori has made in the media to defend himself.
"Batllori was saying that the collection from Arrecife was justified because he had been required to advise the PIL councilors. There is a contradiction in what Batllori expressed, because public money can never be used to advise a political group in a City Council. If it were the government group, I would be quiet, but he said specifically that it was to advise the PIL," Barreto assured.
"Public Enemy Number One"
Another of the issues that surprised Barreto during his statement was a question from one of the lawyers who asked him "why he had not informed the rest of the politicians of the situation" of these invoices. "I told him: look, it shows that you haven't been around here, because we've been saying the same thing for 30 years. Here in Lanzarote we are a group of people who are considered public enemy number one. What information are you going to give us? You're crazy," he said on Radio Lanzarote.
Barreto has preferred not to reveal more details of his statement or of the summary, as it is "sub judice." "One cannot say everything one thinks about the issue, but I know that invoices were paid that from my point of view have nothing to do with work provided either to Inalsa or to the City Council. I am convinced," he insisted.
The former councilor did want to point out that he hopes that "whoever does it, pays for it." "I am very clear about it. If I do it, I am just as tough. Unfortunately, what happened with Inalsa, we will all pay for it," he insisted.
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[Dimas had in his cell an invoice that Batllori intended to charge to Arrecife: "J.M.R. told me that you wanted to divert this one through another place"->72243]