The first steps of the "Union" case already revealed that Dimas Martín charged alleged bribes to businessmen, in exchange for influencing the public officials of his party to favor their interests, awarding them contracts or paying their invoices. However, subsequent reports from the UCO also reflect a collection of commissions disguised as "legality" by the PIL leader, linked to the granting of urban planning licenses.
When tracing Dimas Martín's hidden assets, already within Operation "Jable", the agents located "official" payments of hundreds of thousands of euros to one of his companies, for alleged "management" services for obtaining licenses in Costa Teguise, where the Party of Independents of Lanzarote governed.
The company, Gestión y Desarrollo Gaida S.L., was in the name of his four children (Susana, Elena, Fabián and José Dimas Martín), with Susana Martín as administrator. However, Dimas himself was the one who directed it and "gave the orders", as he admitted himself after his second arrest, within Operation "Jable". Between 2001 and 2003 alone, the company earned at least half a million euros for these license "management" services.
Most of these payments were made by José María Rosell, an Andalusian businessman who was also arrested and charged in this case, as Dimas's alleged front man. Through one of his companies, Grupo Hoteles Playa S.A., Rosell signed a contract on February 22, 2001 with Dimas's company, for it to manage the obtaining of licenses on two plots of his property: 232 and 216 of the Costa Teguise Planning Plan.
License for an illegal hotel
In this contract, which was located by the UCO within this investigation, Gestión y Desarrollo Gaida undertook to "carry out all the procedures necessary before the corresponding organizations, especially the Lanzarote Planning Plan Office, dependent on the island's Council, the Territorial Policy and Tourism Ministries of the Government of the Canary Islands and the Teguise City Council, until obtaining the construction licenses, in accordance with the projects that Grupo Hoteles Playa will present to the aforementioned organizations". That same day, Rosell delivered two promissory notes for the amount of 270,455 euros, which were deposited into the account of Dimas Martín's company.
Nine months later, the then mayor of Teguise, Juan Pedro Hernández (who at that time was a member of the PIL and was part of Dimas's closest circle) granted the license to José María Rosell to build a 600-bed hotel on plot 216 of Costa Teguise, located next to the Playa Verde hotel, owned by the same businessman.
The hotel is today a skeleton at the entrance to Costa Teguise, since the Superior Court of Justice of the Canary Islands paralyzed the works in 2005. Later, the Contentious-Administrative Court number 1 of Las Palmas declared the license illegal and a second extension of it, stating that in its concession there was "a true total and absolute omission of the procedure". According to the ruling, the mayor granted the permits (an extension of a previous license that had expired and violated the island moratorium) despite not having a report from the Council, nor technical and legal reports from the Municipal Technical Office of Teguise.
Payments to Fernández Camero for advice
The contract signed between Dimas's company and Rosell to manage this license established that the 270,455 euros would be used for "the expenses that occur as payment to the different organizations for rights or fees for obtaining licenses", with Dimas keeping some "fees of 10 percent of the final settlement that results".
However, the UCO has not been able to determine whether part of that money was actually used to pay "any payment derived from the expenses of the appropriate licenses". What the agents did find were two promissory notes delivered to Adelfas 24 S.L., a company belonging to the lawyer Felipe Fernández Camero, for the preparation of two reports relating to Rosell's plots.
One of the promissory notes paid to Fernández Camero by Dimas's company was for 2,126 euros and the other for 1,890 euros, corresponding to the fees for carrying out these reports: one on plot 216 and another on 232. The first was prepared ten days before the mayor of Teguise granted the license to José María Rosell's hotel, without other reports from the Council or the City Council itself.
The concept of the invoice paid to Fernández Camero specified that it corresponded to the "legal services provided to Hoteles Playa Canarias S.L., consisting of the issuance of an opinion dated November 19, 2001, on the validity of the license granted by the Teguise City Council to build a five-star hotel on plot 216 of the Costa Teguise urbanization". A validity that did not really exist, as the Courts later determined, by paralyzing the works and declaring the extension of that license illegal.
Other contracts with Rosell
In addition to the 270,000 euros from this operation, José María Rosell delivered other amounts to Dimas Martín's company for similar transactions. In 2002, Susana Martín, as administrator of Gestión y Desarrollo Gaida S.L., signed another contract with a Rosell company, in this case Inversiones Turísticas Inmo S.L., to manage construction licenses on plot 205 of the La Maleza Urbanization, also in Costa Teguise.
In this case, Rosell gave Dimas a little more than 480,000 euros, although the next day (August 19, 2002) 420,708 were transferred to the Teguise City Council. Susana Martín herself later submitted a letter to the Council, in which she reported the intention to "proceed with the change of use of the plots from tourist to residential" and to have made the partial "voluntary payment on account of the settlement that the City Council will make in due course on the rights to be paid for the granting of said license".
The rest of the money delivered by Rosell in this operation, 51,117 euros, was used by the family of Dimas Martín, with several cash withdrawals of between 1,800 and 6,000 euros, with transfers and with a payment order of 19,105 euros to a brother of Dimas in Orlando, Florida.
On the other hand, the UCO also located three invoices for the amount of 342,856 euros, related to another payment from Rosell to Dimas's company for the alleged intermediation in the sale of plot 232 of Costa Teguise, although in this case the investigation has not found accounting entries for the entry of that amount.
The purchase of a clinic and the Arrecife General Plan
Although most of the income from the "intermediation" with the Teguise City Council comes from José María Rosell, Dimas's company also signed similar contracts with other companies. One of them, with Urincasa S.A., which intended to obtain an extension of the license to build 372 apartments. In the contract, the company also requested that the "legalization of the road", "unification of plots" and "construction of commercial premises" be included, among other things.
Urincasa undertook to deliver an initial 180,304 euros and another 300,506 euros "upon presentation of the invoice for the definitive renewal of the correctly legalized license". On March 1, 2003, 180,304 euros were deposited into the account of Gestión y Desarrollo Gaida S.L., although there is no record of the other payment.
As for the 180,304 euros, according to the UCO, there is no record that they were used for any payment related to Urincasa's licenses. What they have been able to prove is the purchase of several plots by Dimas's company, just a few days after receiving that money.
In addition, Gestión y Desarrollo Gaida S.L. also charged in 2002 as an intermediary in the sale of a clinic in Arrecife. According to the documents located by the UCO, Dimas agreed in writing to a commission of 47,479 euros, although in his account they found an income of 270,451 euros in relation to this operation, without it being proven how much he allocated to the possible procedures to execute that sale.
In one of the computers seized from Dimas Martín during the searches carried out by the UCO, they found several files relating to that clinic. And in one of them, there is talk not only of the purchase, but also of the urban planning situation of the plot and that "they want to change its use from clinic to commercial and offices through the General Plan". At that time, the Party of Independents of Lanzarote also governed in Arrecife, with María Isabel Déniz as mayor.
