The president of the Cabildo of Lanzarote and of the Board of Directors of the Tourist Centers, María Dolores Corujo, has clarified the doubts of the opposition regarding an “imagined threat of embargo for an alleged non-payment” of the fee corresponding to the First Island Corporation by the Tourist Centers. “There is no embargo, nor is anyone going to seize anything, as they have tried to make people believe with press releases that have only generated social alarm around the most important public company on this island”, Corujo stated emphatically.
The president has lamented the “lack of rigor” of the Opposition in the face of the request made by nationalists and popular parties for the holding of an Extraordinary Plenary Session to address the matter. “It is a pity that the PP has withdrawn from the Plenary Session with a childish excuse that will now serve as an alibi before public opinion, but it is an absolute audacity that CC intends to give lessons on nothing because their time in the Tourist Centers was an absolute joke. You, gentlemen of Coalición Canaria, who so criticize the current management, are the same ones who approved a debt of 700,000 euros in invitations for meals to your little friends in the Tourist Centers”, Corujo slipped.
“It hurts that this Plenary does not talk about management, that it does not talk about benefits, that it does not talk about the social peace achieved with the workers, nor about the success of a management model of a public company that, with public workers, has achieved historical benefits”, said the president of the First Institution. “And it hurts because we are going to have to focus on the greatest shame that this Government group has suffered, which is to know and verify the tourist, social, economic and legal disaster in which Pedro San Ginés plunged the Tourist Centers, where he left a debt of 10 million euros only with this Cabildo that, with a lot of work, a lot of effort and a lot of rigor, we have been able to reduce to less than half”.
“Benjamín Perdomo has given him a lesson in transparency, seriousness, rigor and control in the management of the Tourist Centers, which today enjoy the greatest financial health in their history”, said the president, addressing the spokesperson for the nationalists, before recalling that “Coalición Canaria cannot give lessons to anyone because they are an absolute fraud. They left the Tourist Centers bankrupt, they left Inalsa bankrupt and everything they touch they destroy”, she concluded.
The Cabildo fee, in detail
During the session, the CEO of the Tourist Centers, Benjamín Perdomo, took the floor, who detailed the status of the Entity's fee as of today: “The Tourist Centers reached an agreement with the Tax Network to divide and postpone those corresponding to the years 2018 and 2019. The one for the year 2020 is denounced pending resolution in court. The one for 2021 is completely paid, and we have already advanced a payment of 500,000 euros corresponding to 2022, which we hope to settle in two installments, before the end of this legislature next May”.
Perdomo also recalled that “the management model that we have implemented has allowed us to reduce the debt that we found from 10 to 4 million euros, in addition to continuing to face the day-to-day in the midst of a pandemic that led us to a limit situation. We are very happy and proud of the work done, which has allowed us to advance part of the payment of the 2022 fee and be up to date with the town halls, something never seen before”, he highlighted.
The CEO of the Entity has also insisted that “the Tax Network is not competent” to liquidate a fee that it considers “illegal”. “The system they established subjects the Entity to a situation of complete defenselessness because it sets a fee at the discretion of the needs of the Cabildo. "We need a new criterion that does not leave it to the whim of those who used it to balance their accounts in the Cabildo or to make debts disappear overnight without any explanation”, he concluded.
In this line, the island director of Presidency and Human Resources, Francisco Javier Rodríguez, has exposed the technical and legal principles that, in his opinion, "highlight the criteria of the current fee with the Cabildo of Lanzarote" and has supported the need to define a new system to regularize the participation on the profits of the Entity.