The complainant in the La Bufona case, Eduardo Murillo, has presented a new document to the Provincial Prosecutor's Office of Las Palmas, asking that the "cadastral alteration" be investigated, which, he maintains, was carried out in the last year and that "benefited" the island president of the Popular Party, Ástrid Pérez. Specifically, the complaint maintains that between 2015 and 2016, the property where her home is located was listed in the Cadastre as "residential use" land, when until then it appeared as a "rustic plot for agricultural use". In fact, both this house and the other 13 located on the same street have a partial demolition order, for occupying protected land with part of the constructions. In addition, Ástrid Pérez's house went from 203 to 240 square meters of constructed area in the Cadastre.
According to Murillo, it was in April of this year when he detected that last change in the Cadastre, which only affected the home of the president of the PP, since the other adjoining houses continued to have the same land category. At that time, as La Voz de Lanzarote published last week, Eduardo Murillo went to the delegate of Economy and Finance of Las Palmas, warning of this new and alleged irregularity and pointing out that it could constitute a crime. In addition, he again asked for explanations as to why a sentence issued in 2013 by the Superior Court of Justice of the Canary Islands, which annulled the cadastral registration of all those homes, pointing out that a "fictitious street" had been created to register them, had not yet been executed.
In his complaint, Murillo recalls that those properties were in his name and were "illegally removed" from the Cadastre. Later, in that place several properties were registered "with double alphanumeric reference (one of a rustic nature and another of an urban nature) in a fictitious street, El Chubasquillo, which does not exist in the municipality of Arrecife". The real name of the street where the houses are located is Calle Chabusquillo, that is, with a change of two letters. According to the complainant, "they used the trick of registering them in a street that does not exist" to "omit the obligation to call the cadastral owner of that land".
The Prosecutor's Office saw it as "appropriate" to open new proceedings two months ago
On March 10, in response to another previous letter from Murillo, the chief prosecutor of the province of Las Palmas, Guillermo García-Panasco, already pointed out that it was "appropriate" to initiate criminal investigation proceedings in relation to the events that occurred a decade ago, "to assess whether any non-statute-barred criminal act has occurred in relation to the fact of deregistering two cadastral properties without granting a hearing to the owners thereof". Now, the Murillo family intends that the investigation into an alleged more recent "cadastral alteration", which is the one that affected Ástrid Pérez's home, should also be added to these proceedings.
In his extension of the complaint asking that this fact be investigated, Eduardo Murillo emphasizes that just five days after he sent his last letter to the Delegation of Economy and Finance, the Cadastre database was modified, finally complying with a sentence that had been issued three years ago. Thus, both the home of the island president of the PP and the other affected houses disappeared from the Cadastre and, according to the resolution sent by the Cadastre Management, dependent on the Ministry of Finance, the properties were re-registered in the name of the Murillo family.
Now, the complainant intends that the Prosecutor's Office investigate whether that resolution, issued on May 10, "could have the purpose of erasing the trace of the administrative illegalities that have allowed the illicit registration in the Cadastre database of homes in the planning of La Bufona", and also whether "it could have the purpose of making the cadastral singularity that affected the home owned by the president of the Popular Party Ástrid Pérez disappear, which was the only house that appeared in the Cadastre plans that was built on residential land, unlike the homes of her neighbors". And this fact had been denounced by Murillo before the Treasury Delegation just five days before this resolution was approved, and after years of demanding that the sentence be executed and the registry entries of those illegal homes be annulled.
Asks that the file on which that change was based be investigated
In his extension of the complaint, presented this Monday, May 23, Murillo asks the Provincial Prosecutor's Office to "request the island president of the PP, Ástrid Pérez, to report in which administrative file and based on what documentation, the manager of the Cadastre, José Antonio Mateos Tejada, authorized that her house in La Bufona was the only one that appeared in the Cadastre plans as built on residential land, maintaining the homes of her neighbors as built on rustic land for agricultural use".
In addition, he also asks that it be investigated "whether the manager's action could constitute a crime of prevarication, in its modality of commission by omission", for not having executed in three years the firm sentence of the TSJC annulling those cadastral registrations. On this point, the chief prosecutor replied two months ago to Murillo that it was not appropriate "for the moment to initiate a criminal investigation for the alleged conduct of not executing a judicial sentence", since he understood that he should first address the court that issued the sentence and, in the event that the court "appreciated a conduct reluctant to execution", it would proceed to notify the Prosecutor's Office to open proceedings.
However, García-Panasco did appreciate reasons to open an investigation into the changes in the cadastre in the past decade, when the properties of the Murillo family were deregistered, to later register in that land several properties with the homes promoted by Brisa Inversiones, which were acquired by different individuals, including Ástrid Pérez and the then coordinating prosecutor in Lanzarote, Miguel Pallarés.
A separate piece seven years ago
In the response sent by García-Panasco to Murillo last March, reference is also made to a separate piece that was opened within the La Bufona case seven years ago, precisely to investigate the "irregular cadastral situation" of those properties and the "possible commission of an economic crime or tax fraud". And it is that for a time, the plots were "omitted" from the Cadastre database, so neither Brisa Inversiones nor the subsequent buyers of the homes paid taxes for a time, until finally the houses were illegally registered in the Cadastre, with a registration that has now been annulled.
Regarding that separate piece, the Prosecutor's Office does not clarify in what situation it is and in its response to Murillo, it limits itself to pointing out that "it is considered that the investigation proceedings were incorporated into the case, precisely at the request of the Public Prosecutor", and that "it is understood" that in the prosecutor's indictment in the La Bufona case, the Prosecutor's Office's position "regarding all the facts object of that procedure" was "set".
However, in the main case, which was tried last November, 16 years after the instruction began, only an accusation was made by the Prosecutor's Office for continued crimes against Land Management. For those crimes, the developer and the builder of those homes, Antonio Caro and Federico Echevarría, who were partners of Brisa Inversiones together with the then head of the Cadastre in Arrecife, Francisco Carmona, who was also charged and died during the instruction of the case, were convicted after that trial.
Now, the Prosecutor's Office considers that it is "appropriate" to open new proceedings to investigate those cadastral alterations, and the Murillo family intends that this investigation also reach more recent events, due to that change that they detected a few months ago in Ástrid Pérez's home, and that later "disappeared" when "eliminating" all those houses from the Cadastre.
"Given that I have been the cadastral owner of the urban land and the rustic land occupied by the home owned by Mrs. Ástrid Pérez since the last century, I cannot understand how cadastral properties of my ownership have been altered again, without the Cadastre Management of Las Palmas communicating it to me and without giving me a hearing in the administrative file", Murillo insists in the extension of the complaint that he has addressed to the chief prosecutor.
