"I have neither seen, nor signed, nor ordered Christmas baskets in the Tourist Centers, nor were Christmas baskets distributed. And to this day I have not seen an invoice." That is what former councilor Echedey Eugenio reiterated this Thursday, despite the fact that the Company Committee has already provided that invoice from two years ago, for an amount of 14,784 euros.
"First news. I still haven't had the opportunity to see an invoice for Christmas baskets from the Tourist Centers," Eugenio insisted. "If you have it, I would appreciate it if you could send it to me to confirm what happened. I'm curious, now that you tell me," he responded on Radio Lanzarote ? Onda Cero, when asked about this document that confirms what they had been denouncing from the Company Committee.
However, Eugenio clings to the concept that appears on that invoice. "But does it say Christmas baskets?", he repeated before each question, without clarifying what they could have bought if not 320 units of different Christmas products. In addition to two types of wine bottles and one of 70 centiliter rum, the invoice includes the purchase of 320 bags of 100 gram sugared almonds and as many units of two types of nougat, shortbread and almonds, as well as almogrote, two wedges of cheese (one semi-cured and one with paprika) and even the walnut baskets themselves. For the baskets alone, the Centers paid 1,088 euros, and according to the company committee, those wicker baskets are still in the warehouse more than two years later.
"Does anyone really believe that the committee was going to be rewarded with baskets"?
"But does it say Christmas basket?", Eugenio insisted again when reading the concepts that appear on that invoice, which according to him does not prove that Christmas baskets were bought for the workers. And he says the same about the photos that La Voz de Lanzarote has also published of those baskets, which, according to the Company Committee's complaint, ended up in a warehouse at the Farmer's Monument. And it is that after making that expense, they were not even delivered to the workers. Later, according to the current management of the Centers, they ended up dismantling them, even having to throw away products that had expired, such as cheese.
"2017 was the year of the centers' strike. Does anyone really believe that after the strike someone was going to reward the Company Committee with a Christmas basket?", added the former councilor, who stressed that he was also on medical leave on those dates and therefore could not have made that order either, for which the Company Committee has announced that it will now file a complaint for a possible crime of embezzlement, after having obtained the invoice by requesting it from the new management.
However, when asked about the possibility that it was the then CEO, José Juan Lorenzo, who ordered the baskets, Echedey Eugenio also rejected it. "He is assuming that they were bought," he questioned, maintaining that that invoice does not prove that Christmas baskets were ordered.
"What bothers us is that public money was wasted"
In addition, Eugenio has once again attacked the Company Committee, questioning its credibility and accusing it of "playing politics" with this issue. "I am currently a spokesperson in the Arrecife City Council. We are in the year 2020 and the Company Committee continues to want to play politics with things from 2017", criticized the former councilor, who believes that we should stop talking about this issue.
For his part, the president of the Company Committee, Antonio Bonilla, has defended that "the population of Lanzarote needs to know what is done with the money of this company in Lanzarote that is public" and has reiterated that there could be "crime" in these events. "We are not bothered that they did not give us the Christmas baskets, but that public money was wasted," he added.
In addition, he has maintained that Eugenio himself "knows perfectly well what those products were bought for" and has stated that he does not understand "how he continues with this fuss" after the invoice was made public. "They bought three-quarter bottles of rum, not the big ones. If they were going to buy for the bars, they would buy in a different way and with a different purchase order," he stressed with respect to one of the products included in the invoice. "If this gentleman manages four sugared almonds and four shortbreads like this, imagine if the money he is given is bigger," he questioned.
