She is not aware "that there was a project with that name", nor "any contract" nor "any service" that was provided and that "fits" with the concept of the invoice. That is what a technician from the Arrecife City Council assured in court, when she was shown an invoice for 63,000 euros paid by the City Council and investigated within the "Montecarlo" case.
The payment was authorized by the former mayor of the PP, Cándido Reguera, and charged to one of the councilorships managed by Lorenzo Lemaur. However, the technician who worked in Lemaur's areas assures that she is unaware of "the project" referred to in the invoice, and also that any service has actually been provided in that concept. The worker responsible for the Culture area stated the same in writing, upon receiving a request from the Prosecutor's Office requesting documents on that payment. According to this worker, neither the project nor its report was recorded in his department.
In the invoice, from the company Tunera Producciones, it is specified that the concept was the "Study and conclusions of the Project to Support the development of the actions and programs of the socio-cultural centers of Arrecife" and it was issued in December 2010. Just one month before, that company had presented to the City Council a proposal to carry out a project with a very similar name: "Project to support the development of the actions and programs of the Neighborhood Council of the Arrecife City Council".
In her statement as a witness in the Montecarlo case, the responsible technician pointed out that she did know the project under that name, although in this case she is also unaware of how it was contracted or that it was ever executed. In this regard, she explained that when Tunera presented this proposal, in November 2010, Lemaur "requested help to prepare the specifications, because the contracting service was very strict, in the sense that there should be a technician who had supervised the specifications".
"He needed a technician"
After fulfilling this assignment, the technician informed the councilor that "the award should be processed as a negotiated procedure" and that "two other companies should be invited", since the contract exceeded 18,000 euros. However, according to what she declared in court, she is not aware that afterwards "the invitations were made, nor that the contract was concluded, nor that the service was executed".
And all this, despite the fact that they made her appear as the person in charge of the contract. "I understand that it was because he needed a technician," she explained in her statement, in which she insisted that she limited herself to making the technical specifications, and then she never heard anything else, so she understood that the contract was not even signed.
However, the City Council did pay up to three invoices for this alleged service. The first, in theory, would be the one paid by order of Cándido Reguera, although the exact name of the project does not coincide. The second two were authorized by the former councilor Lorenzo Lemaur and were 15,461 euros each.
The one authorized by Reguera, for an amount of 63,000 euros, corresponds in theory to the alleged "study and conclusions" of the project, which in reality had been presented only a month before in the Consistory, and as a simple proposal. The second, already paid by Lemaur and for an amount of 15,461 euros, corresponded to the payment for the development of the project between the months of October 2010 and January 2011. That is, it was paid even a month in which the alleged project had not even been presented yet in the Consistory.
In addition, when Cándido Reguera was still in the Mayor's Office, the same project arrived twice at the Prosecutor's Office to justify these expenses. In both cases, the text is identical and only the last sheet changes: in one the budget appears, and in the other it does not. And in the one that does include the amount that this initiative will have, the figure coincides with the two invoices paid by Lemaur, which total 29,450 euros plus VAT, but nothing is said about the 63,000 euros previously paid by Reguera.
"Sociological studies" and screens for the World Cup
After being summoned to testify as an accused for these and other events when the case broke out, Cándido Reguera acknowledged that he never saw the report of that project, in which the activities carried out should be reported, although he stated that "he knows that it was done because he remembers having seen two girls working in the socio-cultural centers". However, with respect to the invoice for 63,000 euros that he personally signed, he ended up pointing out that it actually obeyed other services provided by the company.
According to him, "small projects that were being contracted" and that were paid in that same invoice. And among those projects, he assured that they included a "sociological study on Malpaís", "the screens to watch the matches of the Spanish team in the World Cup", "Entrepreneur Day" or "Canary Islands Day". However, both in the invoice and in the payment order, the concept that appears is that of "Study and conclusions of the Project to Support the development of the actions and programs of the socio-cultural centers of Arrecife".
What the former mayor did point out is that he was the one who "personally commissioned" these alleged services to this company. In addition, he admitted that "it was a verbal decision" and that "there is no contracting procedure". Although according to him, there were "several commissions throughout 2010 and 2011" and those 63,000 euros "were not paid for the project alone".
Faced with this statement, the former mayor also had to answer whether it was a possible "irregular splitting" of invoices, to avoid the established contracting procedures, to which he replied that he understood that it was not.
Regarding the "sociological study" that he claimed was paid within those 63,000 euros, the prosecutor asked him if it was a survey and Cándido Reguera confirmed that it was. According to his statement, the company gave him a copy, in which "a company from Madrid appears, called Institutos Perfiles Canarios". Regarding the money that survey cost, Reguera assured that he does not know.
He signed invoices "without looking at the amount"
Although he acknowledged that he was the one who requested those alleged services from Tunera and that he did so without any contracting procedure, Cándido Reguera tried to justify the signing of those invoices by hiding behind the auditor, Carlos Sáenz, who is also charged in the case and remains in pre-trial detention.
In this sense, he assured that "since the auditor did not object", he "signed" the invoices "with the character of giving the go-ahead, because he understands that they have passed the legal channels". In addition, when asked by his lawyer, he added that when he signed invoices it was not just one, but "a block", and that "sometimes he did not look at the amount or the concept" and "signed without further ado".
Neither in the invoice signed by Reguera nor in the two from Lorenzo Lemaur does the signature of the area technician appear, who claims to be unaware of everything related to the Tunera project. In the first invoice, next to Cándido Reguera, Miguel Ángel Leal, assigned to the Tourism area, signs as a technician.
In the other two invoices, next to the name of Lemaur appears that of Emilia Perdomo, who at that time was a member of the government group, although the signature does not correspond to hers. In fact, the City Council had to later clarify to the Court that the one who actually signed those invoices was a worker from the Neighborhoods area, Blas Cedrés, and that by "mistake" the name of Emilia Perdomo was added below.
"General policy" and "dynamization"
In the heading of the project presented by Tunera to the Neighborhoods area, the company defined it as "an external service for the development of activities and projects to be developed, directly or indirectly, by said Councilorship, aimed at the general policy on Neighborhoods of the City Council, the social and cultural dynamization of the same and, specifically, although not primarily, support for the management and dynamization of the socio-cultural centers of the municipality".
In the clauses, it was also established that monthly reports would be presented, to "evaluate the actions" and "rethink objectives". However, neither those monthly reports nor the final report of the project, in which the actions carried out should have been reported, are recorded in the City Council.
In fact, the Prosecutor's Office considers that those services were not even provided: neither those that were paid with the two invoices from Lemaur, nor those of the 63,000 euros previously authorized by Reguera, and attached to that same file.
