The Court has summoned the councilor of Arrecife and general secretary of the Nationalist Party of Lanzarote, Pedro de Armas, to testify, after in the course of the investigation opened for the case of the 1,000 homes, the architect who drafted the controversial project pointed him out as the person who mediated in the granting of said urban permit and who put the developer in contact with the former mayor of Yaiza and De Armas' party colleague, José Francisco Reyes, charged in the proceedings for an alleged crime of urban prevarication.
De Armas had been summoned at 1:30 p.m. in the Court of Instruction No. 8. During the statement, which lasted just over half an hour, the secretary of the PNL has denied "categorically" having intervened in the events that are being investigated, assuring the Judge that he has had "absolutely nothing to do" with the license that his colleague, José Francisco Reyes, granted to Costa Roja in December 2006 and that has been suspended by the Courts of Administrative Litigation for considering it an illegal license.
Upon leaving the appearance, he did not want to elaborate on his assessments and only disassociated himself from the events that Reyes is accused of. "Who needs to be told that I am the secretary of the PNL and he is the vice president of the organization", De Armas told La Voz at the door of the Courts, diverting the reasons for the procedure.
And, like his party colleague, José Francisco Reyes, De Armas has once again insisted that the case opened against the former mayor is "a political conspiracy orchestrated by a political party". An accusation directed towards the Socialist Party, since it was the councilor Carlos Espino, representing his formation, who filed a criminal complaint in April 2007, which has promoted the opening of the case.
Present at the taking of the statement were the lawyers of the three defendants in the case: José Francisco Reyes, the secretary of the Yaiza City Council, Vicente Bartolomé Fuentes, and the head of the Technical Office of the Consistory, Antonio Lorenzo Tejera.
José Francisco Reyes granted authorization in December 2006 to build a large residential complex, Costa Roja, in the north of Playa Blanca, where the construction of 1,012 homes, 220 commercial premises and more than 2,500 parking spaces was planned. The project was granted on non-urban land, ignoring the Island Planning Plan (PIOT) of 1991 and, at the time, the mayor of Yaiza did not inform the Cabildo, despite being obliged to do so. It was La Voz de Lanzarote that made the license public, which is currently appealed by the Cabildo and has precautionary measures that prevent the project from being executed while the judicial process is resolved.
