The former mayor of Yaiza, José Francisco Reyes, and the former secretary of the Town Hall, Vicente Bartolomé Fuentes, have just added a new conviction for urban planning prevarication, for granting licenses for 66 villas in the Playa Blanca Partial Plan knowing that they were illegal. The beneficiary of these permits was Reyes' party colleague, Pedro de Armas. In one of the cases, the license was granted directly to him and, in the other, to the company to which he had just sold the land. As highlighted by another criminal case, De Armas had bought and sold that plot on the same day, obtaining a profit of 800,000 euros in the operation, "without leaving the notary's office".
Along with Reyes and Bartolomé Fuentes, the head of the Yaiza Technical Office, Antonio Lorenzo, who continues to work at the Town Hall, has also been convicted on this occasion. In the sentence, dated November 25, Judge Margarita Gómez imposes a sentence of 19 months in prison and 9 years and 3 months of disqualification on each of them. Both the Prosecutor's Office and the popular accusation, represented by Urban Transparency, requested two years in prison, but the sentence of the Criminal Court Number 1 has reduced the penalties considering that there have been undue delays in the investigation of this case, which began in 2009 and was paralyzed between September 2013 and 2015 without any action being taken.
In addition, the ruling also declares the nullity of the resolutions signed by Reyes authorizing these licenses, that is, it declares them illegal.
"A plurality of infractions" that cannot be attributed to "ignorance"
The sentence concludes that the three defendants incurred in a "plurality of urban infractions that clearly violate the urban legal system" by granting these licenses. And that, it points out that "it reveals not an error or a specific ignorance of an applicable rule, but a reluctant will to adjust to the perfectly regulated parameters of the administrative regulations in urban planning matters." That is, "a clear intention to arbitrarily deviate from the established legal order" to "satisfy the interests of the promoters, to the detriment of the rest of the citizens of the Island of Lanzarote."
Regarding the defense's argument that "on the date of the events the urban planning regulations were not clear," the judge recalls that "they were warned from various instances warning of the illegality and far from attending to such requirements, with the protection of a legal report issued by the promoters' lawyer (Ignacio Díaz de Aguilar) ignored them, agreeing to continue developing the plan for the benefit of the promoters and in contravention of the applicable legislation."
Reports "lacking rigor" to give "appearance of legal formality"
In addition, as highlighted during the trial held on November 17, the sentence states that the reports issued by Bartolomé Fuentes and Lorenzo, and on which Reyes based his decision to grant the licenses, "completely lack the minimum required conditions of motivation, without any rigor and with the clear intention of favoring the granting of the license." Therefore, it concludes that, in addition to being "arbitrary," they were only issued to give an "appearance of legal formality."
In this regard, it recalls that the Apmun technicians who testified as experts pointed out that none of these reports "complied with the regulations." "They report in a generic, non-detailed way, lacking an express pronouncement on whether it was favorable or not, not specifically reporting on the urban planning conditions and without ruling on the merits," the sentence states.
On this point, it recalls that in his statement, the secretary of the Town Hall denied that his reports were favorable and assured that they were only "for processing," that he "did not even see the files, that they passed him the resolutions already signed and that the reports they issued were actually templates." "If his version is followed, licenses were granted without the mandatory legal report," the judge concludes.
As for the head of the Technical Office, the sentence recalls that in his resolution he "acknowledged" that his reports "were not motivated" and alleged that "they were always done like that" and that at that time he "did not know how they should be issued because he did not know the regulations." In this regard, the sentence responds that "it is difficult to understand that he did not know the formal requirements of the reports" when he had been working in the Consistory since 1991 and these licenses were granted in 2005.