"Sometimes I look at myself and I don't recognize myself." With these words, Fernando Becerra finished his statement in the Courts on March 27, 2012, when the secrecy of the "Unión" case had been lifted and he already knew all the evidence against him. And in that statement, he ratified his first confession; he stated emphatically that it was Luis Lleó who asked him to act as an intermediary to offer a bribe to Carlos Espino; and he showed his regret.
"In my life, I have never regretted anything more than this. This issue has destroyed me," said Fernando Becerra, in response to questions from his lawyer. According to him, when he was mediating in this attempted bribery, at one point he began to feel "disgusted", but now he is "even more disgusted".
"Luis Lleó would be lying if he denied that commission money was going to be paid," confirmed Fernando Becerra in his extensive statement, the full content of which had not been revealed until now. In it, Becerra acknowledged the facts that are imputed to him, and whose main protagonist is the other defendant in this case, Luis Lleó, who was trying to unblock the urban development of the Costa Roja plot, at the entrance to Playa Blanca.
When questioned by prosecutor Javier Ródenas, Becerra ratified all the details he had already given in his first statement, after being arrested in May 2009. A confession that he reconfirmed last week, in a preliminary hearing in which he accepted the penalty requested for him by the Prosecutor's Office (a year and a half in prison and a fine of 200,000 euros), and after which the judge ordered the opening of oral proceedings in this case that gave rise to "Unión".
"He told me clearly that there was an offer of money"
"Luis told me clearly that there was an offer of money, that part of it was for Carlos Espino and another for me", for "acting as a mediator", Becerra related. According to his testimony, initially, in the first conversations with Lleó about the matter, "there was talk of a percentage of 5 percent of the business", or a fixed payment of 400,000 euros, to be divided between Espino and him, although later the amount offered rose to 600,000 euros.
"In my mind, the word bribery was not there, I conceived it as a mere commission for Carlos Espino to unblock the situation in Costa Roja", he stated in his statement. When the prosecutor asked him if he was aware that he was going to go to the office of a public official to offer him money, Becerra replied yes: "I was aware, but I did not know the significance it would have later. I recognize that I was a bit unconscious for doing it".
According to his account, after receiving the "instructions" from Luis Lleó, Becerra contacted Carlos Espino, whom he "knew" previously, to arrange a meeting that took place in the Cabildo. "It was a cordial conversation. I didn't address it at first. Then at the end I got down to business and said to him: Look Carlos, I have a friend, Luis, who has a plot in Playa Blanca, and if you unblock it for him, there is an amount of money for you and for me. Luis pays if you can get this project off the ground for him".
At that moment, Espino "remained silent". Becerra recalls that "he didn't say yes or no", but he had "the feeling that it could work out". However, what the then socialist councilor did was go to report what had happened, so the following conversations were recorded and the UCO began to monitor the meetings and gatherings between Becerra and Espino, and Becerra with Lleó, including the one that gave the cause its name, in the "Unión" bar.
"I remember that moment perfectly"
Precisely in that cafeteria, in a meeting documented with images captured by the UCO, Lleó gave Fernando Becerra the "roadmap" that he had to get to Espino, with the steps he had to follow from the Cabildo to unblock the development of the plot.
"I remember that moment perfectly", Becerra said when he saw one of the photographs that they showed him in the Court, in which he and Lleó appear looking at a document. "That was the roadmap that Luis Lleó gave me to give to Carlos Espino", "to give him things done".
What neither Becerra nor Lleó knew then is that two meters from them, several UCO agents dressed in civilian clothes were listening to their conversation and taking photographs of that meeting in the "Unión" cafeteria. And neither that there would be recordings with the meetings between Espino and Becerra, which Lleó's defense is now trying to have annulled, despite the fact that Fernando Becerra himself recognizes and confirms their content. In this regard, as La Voz advanced this Monday, it should be remembered that the Scientific Police has also just certified, in an expert report, that there is no "manipulation" in the DVDs and that "what was recorded is what happened".
"Lleó called me every moment so that I would be aware of the issue"
After the first meetings, which began in May 2008, Espino and Becerra spent months without seeing each other, while the UCO continued its investigation and had already intervened several telephones of different public officials and businessmen by court order, as they discovered new criminal fronts unrelated to this case. "Why from December 3 to May 13 was there no meeting with Espino?", the prosecutor asked him. "At that moment I was getting tired, I was passing the issue, I was doing my thing, my job", Becerra replied.
But during that time, according to his account, Lleó did not stop insisting. "He called me a lot of times, but I didn't even pick up the phone. On occasions he called me so that I wouldn't leave his issue, the plot in Playa Blanca, and so that I would meet with Carlos Espino", he maintained in his statement, in which he stated that after each meeting, he always "called Luis Lleó to give him an account of what had happened".
Until that moment, Becerra assures that he had not received money from Lleó for these efforts, since the agreement was that he would charge if Espino finally accepted the commission and unblocked the urbanization of the plot, which did not happen. "Luis even called me every moment so that I would be aware of the issue and not get distracted".
Regarding whether it was really Lleó who asked him to offer that illegal commission or if it came from him, Fernando Becerra answered the prosecutor's question sharply. "I didn't have a penny, the one who had the money was Luis and he was also the owner of the plot".
He answered the same thing later to Luis Lleó's lawyer, when it was his turn to ask questions and he questioned whether he could "assure with precision" what Luis Lleó really asked him, considering that he had stated that he had no knowledge of urban planning issues. "I understand that he asked me to talk to Carlos to unblock the Costa Roja plot in exchange for money. I understand that perfectly", Becerra replied. "Did you have the feeling that the business was a scam?", the prosecutor asked him. "Yes. A scam mainly for Luis".
"Luis told me that the City Council had it tied up"
As for what they expected from Carlos Espino, Becerra explained that they turned to him to resolve the part that corresponded to the Cabildo, because Luis Lleó told him that "the City Council (of Yaiza) already had it tied up". When the prosecutor insisted on this point, Fernando Becerra reiterated that "Lleó told him for sure about Yaiza", because he remembers that "Carlos Espino told him that the Cabildo's part was not possible without the Yaiza City Council".
"Lleó even told me that he already had a license", explained Becerra, in reference to the license granted in his day by the former mayor José Francisco Reyes, to build more than a thousand homes and 200 commercial premises on that plot. Espino himself had filed a criminal complaint for these events, which gave rise to another case that is still pending trial, and the Cabildo had also denounced the license before the Courts, which later declared it illegal.
Precisely, that complaint also entered into the "negotiations", when Becerra transmitted to Espino that Lleó expected a "gesture of goodwill" on his part. "I remember it perfectly", confirmed Fernando Becerra in the Courts, explaining that what they were asking Espino was to withdraw that lawsuit, offering him another 30,000 euros in exchange. Even, Lleó gave him "different formulas" to do so. One, "let time pass so that it expires". Another, to prepare a technical report to make the Cabildo desist from the lawsuit, "with the pretext that if it went ahead and lost it, it could face millionaire indemnities".
"I said a thousand stupid things to convince him"
In his statement, Fernando Becerra also explained that some of the things he said in the conversations recorded by the UCO were indeed of his "own making", such as the explanations he gave to Espino about how he could "hide" the money he received from that commission. "At all times what I was trying to do was gain his trust and I also said a thousand stupid things to convince him that it was easy".
When questioned by his own lawyer, Becerra also wanted to qualify other parts of the conversations, in which he even spoke of his brother, Juan Carlos Becerra, as well as other officials of the PNL, such as Pedro de Armas and José Francisco Reyes, of whom he claimed that they had formed a "trident" with the issue of the hotels in Playa Blanca and of having "already charged". "They were my bravado to gain the trust of Mr. Espino", he assured in the Court.
