Pedro de Armas has once again made headlines in the national media. If two years ago different televisions and newspapers echoed his trip to the Caribbean, abandoning his position as councilor in Arrecife for six months, this time it has been the investigation for money laundering opened against him that has brought his image back to all of Spain.
The Antena 3 news program has dedicated a space to the news advanced this week by La Voz de Lanzarote, about the criminal case opened two years ago against De Armas, who is being investigated by the Economic and Fiscal Crime Unit of the National Police. Antena 3 reporters have located Pedro de Armas at the airport and, in the news piece, you can see how they follow him around the premises while he refuses to make statements.
"It's a lie. It is political persecution," he finally limited himself to saying about this investigation. "But the Police do not think the same, and since 2012 they have been investigating where his fortune comes from," adds the journalist in the news. Neither does the Prosecutor's Office or the Provincial Court of Las Palmas, which has ordered the investigation to continue, as it understands that there are sufficient indications to maintain the case.
More than 100 farms and millions of square meters in Argentina
So far, the asset investigation of Pedro de Armas has detected 112 farms, 20 vehicles, 9 boats and 66 current accounts, as well as two plots of 130 million square meters in Argentina. Added to this are other suspicious economic movements, as well as "donations" to his children worth almost 1.5 million euros in one year.
In the reports of the Udef and in the writing of the Prosecutor's Office, different urban operations are related in which De Armas obtained millionaire benefits, while holding public office and maintaining a political, personal and commercial relationship with the then mayor of Yaiza, José Francisco Reyes, convicted of urban planning prevarication and with several pending criminal cases behind him.
Among these operations, as La Voz de Lanzarote advanced this Wednesday, is one carried out in a single day in a notary. According to the writing of prosecutor Ignacio Stampa, De Armas obtained "in a moment" a profit of 800,000 euros, buying and selling a plot in the Playa Blanca Partial Plan. Pedro de Armas' family company, Marivista, bought a plot from Xinxol and immediately sold it to Villas Blancas for 800,000 euros more. According to the investigation, the three companies went to the notary together.
In addition, despite the fact that Xinxol had been trying to build on that plot for years without success, Villas Blancas obtained a construction license even before the sale was consummated. And the one who granted that license, later declared illegal by the Justice, was Pedro de Armas' party colleague, José Francisco Reyes, with whom he also shared "businesses".
Since last Monday, La Voz de Lanzarote has been reporting on these and other details of an operation that until now had not been revealed, as it was under summary secrecy. Following the publication of these news, regional newspapers and televisions (including Televisión Canaria) began to echo the information published by La Voz, which has now also jumped to the national media.
