Juan Ramírez sits on the bench

The former mayor of Haría, Juan Ramírez Montero, will be in the dock this Monday, October 16, in the case opened for the lease of the Villa Dolores estate. The Prosecutor's Office, which is asking for four years in prison and twelve years of disqualification for Ramírez, considers that he committed the criminal offenses of falsehood by a public official in an official document and prevarication in relation to the lease of said estate by the City Council, and that later - always with Ramírez as mayor - it was used as a workshop school for the rehabilitation of Haría's heritage.

Specifically, the accusation against the former mayor is due to the fact that the contract signed between the two parties "included an additional clause, whereby if the City Council opted for the extension of the contract for 20 more years, the lessor would receive the amount of 500,000 pesetas per month, an additional clause that did not appear in the contract when it was approved in the plenary session of the City Council", in May 1995, according to the indictment of the Public Prosecutor.

In fact, the original contract was for four years, and for an amount of 150,000 pesetas per month, but with a different typography from the rest of the document, so it is believed that it was added later, this clause was added that more than tripled the monthly payment initially set. The judicial expert reports established that this additional clause was added with a typewriter that was found at the headquarters of the Haría City Council, and that is now deposited in the Justice of the Peace Court.

To this we must add that when it was agreed to allocate the Los Dolores estate for use as a school - workshop, a subsidy was requested, for which there had to be a transfer contract of the estate for a period of at least 25 years. What existed until then was not a transfer contract (of a gratuitous nature), but a lease and, in view of this, according to the Public Prosecutor, Ramírez signed a new contract with the sole administrator of the property, Pedro Perdomo Reyes, in this case of transfer. In this way, according to the prosecutor's writing, there are two contracts for the same property, and in coinciding periods, one for lease and another for transfer, which would be an irregularity.

More defendants

The prosecutor also asks that a fine and a sentence of suspension from public office for ten months be imposed on Teresa Caba Jiménez, who was then the secretary of the City Council, and is accused of having "failed in her duties to ensure that the contract was carried out according to the conditions approved by the plenary session of the City Council".

The third defendant in this process is the sole administrator of the company that owns the property in question, Villalma-94 S. L., the aforementioned Pedro Perdomo Reyes, whom the prosecutor considers to have committed the crime of "falsehood by an individual in an official document", in view of which he requests that he be sentenced to two years in prison, disqualification from voting for the same period and a fine.

In addition, the prosecutor's accusation also maintains that former mayor Juan Ramírez falsified a land classification, in this case in the Tabayesco area, for the benefit of the same company, giving it free rein to build on a plot that was classified as a rural nucleus. This, according to the accusation, in addition to the irregularity that the act itself would entail, may be a clear indication of an alleged connivance between the former mayor and the owner of both the Villa Dolores estate and the land in question.

The alleged irregularities committed with the lease of the Villa Dolores estate came to light when in 2000, and already with José Torres Stinga as mayor of Haría, the City Council refused to continue paying the rent of said estate, understanding that things were not at all clear.