Nueva Canarias has reacted to the news advanced in recent days by La Voz de Lanzarote, regarding the investigation for alleged money laundering against Pedro de Armas and his family, and has done so by announcing that the councilor of Arrecife has made his position available to the party. "The competent bodies of Nueva Canarias will be the ones who, in the next Island Executive, analyze the situation and make a decision in this regard," the formation points out, leaving the door open to the possibility of asking the councilor for the act.
It should be remembered that the PNL, in which Pedro de Armas militated, joined Nueva Canarias last year. At the island Congress held last December, Alejandro Díaz was elected as the new president, thus replacing Juan Carlos Becerra, who for years presided over the PNL.
In its brief press release, Nueva Canarias Lanzarote points out that "for the moment it will not make any assessment or statement in reference to what has happened in recent days with its councilor in the Arrecife City Council, Pedro de Armas Sanginés, as it is a personal judicial investigation of the affected party".
In any case, and although it emphasizes that "to date he has not been charged with any crime" and that the Investigating Court Number 3 of Arrecife dismissed the case at the time, they do anticipate that the party "is forming an opinion in this regard in the corresponding bodies".
And it is that although, effectively, last August the current investigating judge agreed to the provisional dismissal of the proceedings, the Provincial Court later revoked this decision, ordering that the investigation continue. In its order, the Court maintains that there are sufficient indications to maintain the case, as well as steps that are still pending. The same criteria is maintained by the Provincial Prosecutor's Office of Las Palmas and by the Economic and Fiscal Crime Unit of the National Police (Udef), which is the one that has carried out this investigation since its inception.
Bulky assets and suspicious operations
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. To this are added other suspicious economic movements, as well as "donations" to his children worth almost 1.5 million euros in one year.
In the Udef reports and in the Prosecutor's writing, 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 criminal cases pending 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 transpired, as it was under summary secrecy. Following the publication of this news, regional newspapers and televisions (including Televisión Canaria) began to echo the information published by La Voz, which has also ended up jumping to national media, such as the Antena 3 news.
