The former Urban Planning Councilor of Tías, José Alberto Reyes De León, has been sentenced to two years and three months in prison, as well as a fine of about 1,600 euros, for a crime of document forgery committed in 2001. The sentence of the Provincial Court of Las Palmas considers it proven that Reyes "flagrantly violated the truth" in a document he sent to the Agency for the Protection of the Urban and Natural Environment (Apmun), thus protecting an illegal construction promoted by the company Industriales de la Construcción de Lanzarote S.A. (Indelasa).
"With his falsehood, he provoked the non-action of the Apmun, which has allowed the works in question, illegal and unlegalizable (?), to have been consolidated by the statute of limitations of the crime of illegal construction, with what this entails of huge patrimonial benefit for the company Indelasa S.A.", the sentence emphasizes. The construction was not demolished and the City Council limited itself to imposing a "ridiculous" sanction, according to the sentence, of 240 euros.
The works consisted of the construction of an aggregate deposit, formed by reinforced concrete walls on a floor of the same material, located in the area known as Lomo de Piedra Blanca or la Rinconada, belonging to the municipality of Tías. The works began without the territorial qualification of the Cabildo or the urban planning license of the City Council. Authorization had not even been requested from the General Directorate of Urban Planning of the Government of the Canary Islands for the construction of a building on rustic land.
All these irregularities were highlighted in a technical report of the Apmun, dated September 13, 2000, which gave rise to sanctioning measures against the company, including the sealing of the works, as well as the requirement to legalize them within three months. In addition, the Apmun addressed the City Council to initiate a sanctioning procedure.
Inconclusive file
On October 19, 2000, after receiving the requirement from the Apum, the Tías City Council agreed to initiate an administrative file against Indelasa. Even, among the sanctioning measures, it included the possible demolition of the works, but this was never carried out.
Nine months later, the Apmun again addressed the City Council, requesting information on what had happened with this file and asking if the demolition had been carried out. And the answer came in a municipal letter signed by the then Councilor for Urban Planning, José Alberto Reyes, in which he assured that "the sanctioning procedure initiated by the municipal consistory had ended with the payment of the corresponding sanction and that the works under investigation had been legalized". He even cited the references of two municipal files.
Regarding these municipal files, the sentence warns of "the surreptitious manipulation carried out by the accused with his writing". And it is that "the works legalized in the aforementioned administrative files had nothing to do with the works consisting of the aggregate deposit". That is, they referred to other license applications made to the city council by the same company.
"This deceptive maneuver was intended to make the Apmun see that the Municipal Corporation of Tías had made the convenient use of the sanctioning power in defense of urban legality, preventing the sanctioning action of the Agency and the repair of the diminished legal order", the sentence states.
In addition, it insists that the letter signed by the then Councilor for Urban Planning "notoriously lacked the truth of the facts", since "the works had not only not been legalized, since they lacked the mandatory municipal license and territorial qualification, but, in addition, in no case could they have been legalized". In fact, they were located in Potentially Productive Rustic Land, which prevented this type of construction. Subsequently, the Cabildo expressly denied the territorial qualification.
"Ridiculous" sanction
What the City Council did do is charge a sanction to the company promoting the works. "It is the only thing in which José Alberto Reyes de León does not seem to be lying in his letter of August 25, 2001", the sentence states. However, it also emphasizes that "the sanction is clearly ridiculous". And it is that Indelasa paid 40,000 pesetas of those then (240 euros), while the fines provided by law for this type of cases ranged from 100,000 to 1,000,000 pesetas.
This, according to the Chamber of the Hearing literally emphasizes, "leads to think that even with the adoption of this measure, the Tías City Council acted with the intention of benefiting the company in question (leaving aside the question, in which we are not going to stop or specifically assess, that Celestino Saavedra, partner of Indelasa S.A., was the uncle of the then mayor of the Tías City Council)".
Defense of the accused
During the trial, the defense of the accused, represented by Juana Fernández de las Heras, tried to argue that he did not write the document and that he only signed it, "as he was not a technician but only a politician and trusted what the technicians told him". However, according to the sentence, José Alberto Reyes did acknowledge that he knew the sanctioning file, as well as that the work was not legalized, but nevertheless he signed "consciously the opposite".
The sentence also emphasizes that the Legal Regime of Local Entities provides that "the members of the local Corporations are subject to civil and criminal liability for the acts and omissions carried out in the exercise of their office", and that this "he knew or should have known" the accused, who was "the ultimate responsible for what he signed", because he had the powers delegated by the mayor, as both declared during the trial.
In his defense, José Alberto Reyes also alleged that in the letter he sent to the Apmun "he alluded to several works in which the company Indelasa was involved, indicating that some works were legalized and others were not". In this regard, the Hearing points out that "his attempt to cause confusion is fruitless". In this sense, it emphasizes that the sanctioning file initiated against Indelasa is for the construction of an aggregate deposit, and not for any other issue; that the requirement of the Apmun referred "solely and exclusively to those works"; and that the letter sent by the councilor "refers solely and exclusively to the work of installation of the aggregate deposit, signing and affirming that it had already been legalized".
Therefore, the First Section of the Provincial Court considers that the testimonial evidence practiced in the trial "leaves no doubt about how the facts occurred" and emphasizes that "if the response from the City Council had been different, the Apmun would have subrogated in the functions of the City Council to continue with the file and require the demolition of the illegal works".
Undue delays
Although the prosecutor and the private prosecution requested six years in prison and a fine of about 14,400 euros, the sentence has significantly reduced the sentence, recognizing that there have been undue delays in the process, due to the time it has taken to resolve the case.
"Since the events were committed, on August 25, 2001, to date, nothing more and nothing less than almost ten years have passed", the sentence states. Thus, taking into account that mitigating circumstance, it imposes a sentence even lower than that contemplated by the Penal Code for this type of crime, which ranges from three to six years in prison.
The sentence, against which an appeal can be filed before the Supreme Court, also condemns José Alberto Reyes to one year and six months of special disqualification and to the payment of the costs of the procedure, including those of the private prosecution that appeared in this case.
