Judge Silvia Muñoz has completed the instruction of the criminal case opened for the licenses granted by the former mayor of Yaiza, José Francisco Reyes, to his party colleague, Pedro de Armas, in the Playa Blanca Partial Plan. The investigation began following a complaint filed in July 2009 and the magistrate has just issued this Tuesday the order for the initiation of the abbreviated procedure, which ends the instruction. Now, she gives ten days to the Prosecutor's Office and the accusers to formulate their indictment.
In the absence of these writings, the judge considers that there are indications to bring three people to trial for alleged crimes of urban planning prevarication, in its active and/or omissive form. In addition to the former mayor, the former secretary of the City Council, Vicente Bartolomé Fuentes (disqualified and removed from his position by a previous conviction) and the head of the Technical Office, Antonio Lorenzo Tejera, are charged in the case.
In her order, the judge points out that the three issued "favorable reports to the granting of urban planning license" in two files related to two plots "intentionally and with manifest breach of the obligations of their position (secretary of the City Council, head of the Technical Office and mayor of the City Council of Yaiza respectively) despite being aware of its clear confrontation with urban regulations, given the absolute lack of regulations that allowed the constructions that were authorized".
The two plots where the construction was authorized belonged to or had belonged to Pedro de Armas. In one of the cases, the license was granted directly to his company, Marivista. In the other, the license was obtained just after passing through the hands of Pedro de Armas, who bought and sold the plot on the same day. According to another judicial case that remains open against De Armas for alleged money laundering, in that operation the politician earned 800,000 euros "in a moment" and "without leaving the notary's office". In total, the two licenses authorized the construction of 66 homes, in a plan that was extinct and where it was not possible to build.
Reyes hid the licenses
As happened in other cases, at the time José Francisco Reyes hid these licenses from the Cabildo, to prevent it from appealing them. Furthermore, in the case of those granted to De Armas, Reyes resisted handing them over even when the Court forced him to notify the Island Corporation of all the permits he had granted. When the Cabildo finally became aware of these licenses, it appealed them in the courts, which already ratified at the time the illegality not only of the different licenses granted in that Partial Plan, but also of the Plan as a whole.
Now, what will be determined are the criminal responsibilities for the granting of these permits. According to Judge Silvia Muñoz in her order, in the case of one of the licenses (the one granted directly to De Armas' company for 10 single-family homes) the mandatory report of compatibility with the Island Plan was not requested from the Cabildo, which was "silenced" in the reports of the secretary and the head of the Technical Office. In the case of the other license, this report was requested, but the permit was granted before receiving the response from the Cabildo, which was also negative.
The order emphasizes that "neither was the favorable and mandatory report of the competent Canary Public Administration in matters of housing obtained in any of the files, nor was a copy of the project or the complementary documentation" required by the regulations sent to said Administration. Regarding the mayor, the judge considers that "despite the intentional silence of the technical and legal reports" of the secretary and the head of the Technical Office, Reyes "had full knowledge of the lack of urban regulations to protect its concession, being the representative of the City Council of Yaiza in the Compensation Boards".
This is just one of the procedures that the former mayor has pending for the illegal licenses granted during his mandate. In the main one, which is also ready to go to trial, the Prosecutor's Office is asking for 25 years in prison, for the massive granting of illegal tourist licenses in Playa Blanca.