The Unión case has just added its third conviction. The Provincial Court of Las Palmas has already issued its ruling after the Proselan trial and has imposed sentences of 5 years and 3 months in prison and 9 years of absolute disqualification on the auditor of Arrecife, Carlos Sáenz, the former head of the Technical Office, Rafael Arrocha, and the businessman José Daniel Hernández, for the looting of a quarter of a million euros from the City Council, paying invoices for services not provided.
In addition, they will all have to jointly return the embezzled money to the Arrecife City Council, which amounts to a total of 251,953 euros. Proselan will also have to respond for half of that figure as a subsidiary civilly liable company, since part of the invoices were issued in the name of this company and the rest directly in the name of José Daniel Hernández.
As for the fourth defendant who sat on the bench in that trial, the former Finance Councilor José Miguel Rodríguez, the Court has imposed a sentence of 1 year and 4 months in prison and 3 years of disqualification. In his case, following the criteria raised by the Prosecutor's Office, the sentence has been reduced considering as mitigating factors the confession of the crimes and the reparation of the damage, since before the trial he even returned part of the embezzled money.
"They colluded" to steal public funds
As the prosecutor Ignacio Stampa maintained in his indictment, the Court considers it proven that Sáenz, Arrocha and Rodríguez incurred in a continued crime of embezzlement, in conjunction with another crime of malfeasance. For these same crimes, in conjunction with another crime of falsification of a commercial document, he also condemns the businessman. According to the ruling, Hernández prepared and presented false invoices to the City Council, "with perfect knowledge that they did not correspond to the provision of any service." And all this, after having "colluded" with the other three defendants to steal this money from the City Council. "The indications can only point to a prior agreement," the Court points out, which considers that to embezzle that public money "the intervention of all the defendants was necessary."
With these proven crimes, the penalties could range between a minimum of 5 years and 3 months, which is what has been imposed, and a maximum of 6 years, which is what the Prosecutor's Office requested. In this regard, the Court explains that it has chosen to apply "the minimum penalties", "taking into account the lack of a criminal record and the remoteness of the events", which occurred between 2008 and 2009.
During that period, José Daniel Hernández submitted 14 invoices to the City Council for alleged electricity work at various Arrecife festivals. The total amount of the invoices was about 350,000 euros, although he did not get to collect almost 100,000, since the payment was blocked after the outbreak of the Unión case and the rupture of the Arrecife government group. In all cases, the invoices were paid with the approval of Carlos Sáenz, Rafael Arrocha and José Miguel Rodríguez, despite the fact that they were aware, according to the ruling, that they corresponded to "electricity services that were never actually carried out, with the consequent personal profit and corresponding loss for the municipal public coffers."
The councilor's confession, another "incriminating evidence"
During the trial, one of the four defendants, the former councilor José Miguel Rodríguez, admitted to having contributed to embezzling that money. Even, as stated in the ruling, he acknowledged that "it was the way of operating in the Arrecife City Council at that time to enrich themselves" and that "sometimes some profited and other times others profited."
Regarding the defenses' argument, which attempted to diminish the value of that statement, the ruling emphasizes that the fact that Rodríguez has obtained a reduction in the penalties for that confession "does not discredit it or overshadow its reliability." Furthermore, it emphasizes that it is "corroborated by the investigations and documents" collected during the investigation and presented by the Prosecutor's Office in the trial.
"In view of the personal and documentary evidence, we have two options. Either understand that José Miguel Rodríguez's confession lacks any support and therefore only an acquittal is possible, or understand that in the face of the overwhelming incriminating evidence provided by the accusations, the exculpatory evidence provided by the defenses lacks any enervating value. It is clear that we have opted for this option," concludes the speaker, the magistrate Carlos Vielba.
Absence of contract, fractured invoices and other "frauds"
Although the central axis of the conviction is that the work for which the City Council paid was not carried out, the ruling lists other "frauds" in the procedure, which are precisely those that allowed to circumvent the controls established to monitor the contracting and use of money of a public administration. "In this way, they prevented the correct auditing of the unduly made payments," the ruling states, emphasizing the role played by the auditor, who was responsible for auditing the legality of those payments and the procedure.
On the one hand, there was no prior contract to carry out those works (which in reality were fictitious according to the ruling). There was only an alleged verbal order from the head of the Technical Office, according to Arrocha himself. However, the ruling emphasizes that this official did not even have the authority to carry out contracts. Furthermore, it considers it proven that invoices were "fractioned" to pretend that it was a minor contract (subject to fewer controls and requirements). Thus, the alleged assembly work was invoiced on one side and the disassembly work on the other.
Only for those alleged works of "assembly and use of lines, poles, projectors, panels, accessories and maintenance" in the San José Obrero festivals, José Daniel Hernández charged a total of about 45,000 euros adding the two invoices. And for the same concept, he received more than 55,000 euros for the Carnival festivals. However, according to several City Council technicians during the trial, for the Carnival the City Council actually hired two other electricity companies, Leyce and Inelcon, and not Proselan.
Some "works" that only the defendants knew about
As for the Valterra, Titerroy, Argana Baja and San Francisco Javier festivals, the works were actually carried out by workers of the City Council itself. And in most cases, the cost of those works was "1,000 or 2,000 euros", according to the technicians during the trial, and not more than 45,000, which is what that businessman charged for each Arrecife festival in which he supposedly intervened. Furthermore, in the case of the Chaxiraxi festivals, in the Argana Baja neighborhood, these works are not even carried out, because the events take place inside the socio-cultural center.
Afterwards, Arrocha himself was also supposedly in charge of supervising that the works had been carried out, although no one else in the City Council was aware of their existence. In fact, all the workers who testified in the trial did so to ensure that they were not aware of the works, the contracting, or even the need for those services. Regarding why there was also no written record of his alleged supervision, Arrocha stated that in his visits to check the completion of the works he "took notes" and that "they will be in the City Council", but he did not provide them to the trial.
"He protected, allowed and consented to the collection of public money, with obvious damage to the general interests in whose service the managers of public funds are, under the umbrella of a prohibited verbal contracting that also did not provide any utility to the contracting administrations," the ruling insists. Furthermore, it adds that some invoices were paid even before the alleged service had been provided.
Some alleged budgets that were not even recorded in the City Council
To all this, the ruling adds that not even a prior budget had been submitted to the City Council, which would have been mandatory even if it was considered a minor contract. During the trial, the defenses argued that these budgets did exist and presented the documents, but the ruling considers that they were "made up" to "simulate the reality of the contracting", but that in reality "they were not presented in any Registry of the Arrecife City Council."
In those budgets, only "the signature of its author appears, as well as, in order to simulate administrative regularity with its presentation, the signature of the defendant Rafael Arrocha, as well as the seal of the Technical Office, lacking, in any case, a registration date." In those budgets, concepts are included that have nothing to do with the brief description that the invoices contain, which are the only documents that were officially recorded in the City Council. Among other things, as the ruling points out several times, the budgets included an item of "night guard service" of 3,000 euros
And all this despite the fact that in the trial, the defenses did not provide a single worker who had carried out those alleged tasks, neither of electricity nor of surveillance. In fact, as confirmed by the experts during the trial, it is not recorded that Proselan had even a single employee, "neither vehicle nor premises." According to a tax inspector, the company received "very specific invoicing in a period of time and then disappeared." And that invoicing came mostly from the Arrecife City Council. Furthermore, it received payments from the San Bartolomé City Council, where Carlos Sáenz was also the auditor at that time.
The same expert confirmed that the day after receiving an income of about 230,000 euros from the Arrecife City Council, José Daniel Hernández withdrew that money from his account. According to the businessman, he did it to avoid an embargo, because he had debts with the Treasury (which would also have prevented his contracting by a public administration). However, the ruling concludes that it is not known where that money went. Thus, although it clarifies that this extreme has not been proven, it links that doubt about the whereabouts of the money to the possibility that the rest of the defendants, now convicted, could also have received an economic benefit by "consenting", "allowing" and "protecting" that embezzlement of public money.
