At 10:24 a.m., José Francisco Reyes crossed the door of Judge Nicolás Pita's office to testify, once again, before the Justice for the granting of licenses in the municipality of Yaiza. This time, the southern mayor is charged with an alleged crime of malfeasance for granting the license for the 1,000 homes, which last February was made public by La Voz de Lanzarote.
But this is not the only case that the mayor has open. In fact, he is also accused of alleged crimes of malfeasance, influence peddling, bribery and money laundering for the massive granting of licenses, within an open investigation, which included telephone tapping, following a complaint filed by the former Minister of Territorial Policy of the Cabildo, Carlos Espino. "It is the second lawsuit and from the same inventors," Reyes told this media shortly before entering to testify.
And it was also the Socialist Party who decided to file a criminal complaint against him and against two municipal technicians for the megalicense of the 1,000 homes in Costa Roja, considering insufficient the procedures initiated by the Cabildo, which only appealed the license itself (now suspended as a precautionary measure).
But although that lawsuit was admitted for processing and has made him return to the Courts as an accused, Reyes insists that "the best neighbor can file a lawsuit against one", and assured that he felt "perfectly" before entering to testify with his lawyer, Felipe Fernández Camero. A statement in which, for more than an hour, he had to give an account of why he granted a license to build the Costa Roja residential complex, the largest urban project on the island for which 1,012 homes, 220 commercial premises and more than 2,500 parking spaces would be located north of Playa Blanca, on non-urban land, ignoring the Island Planning Plan (PIOT) of 1991 and hiding it from the Cabildo, despite the fact that it is obliged to notify it of the urban planning permits granted by the City Council.
Meanwhile, in the corridors of the Courts, the secretary of the City Council, Vicente Bartolomé Fuentes, who was summoned at 11 in the morning and arrived at the judicial offices at about 10:20, was also waiting for his turn to testify as an accused in this case, and at the end of this week it will be the turn of the third defendant in this case, the head of the Municipal Technical Office Antonio Lorenzo Tejera.
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