San Ginés also hired Calatayud “directly” as a lawyer for the Consortium in the Inalsa tender and charged 321,000 euros

This is stated by the current government group, which emphasizes that the lawyer "has not provided any document justifying his hiring as a lawyer for the Consortium", where "there is no file or resolution agreeing to his designation" for that incident

June 16 2021 (07:28 WEST)
The lawyer Ignacio Calatayud
The lawyer Ignacio Calatayud

The former president of the Cabildo, Pedro San Ginés, also hired Ignacio Calatayud “directly and verbally” as a lawyer for the Water Consortium in one of the incidents of the Inalsa bankruptcy proceedings, “for which he pocketed 321,000 euros in costs owned by the public entity.” This has been revealed by the current government group, as a result of the investigation carried out by the public water company, after this lawyer claimed another 82,000 euros from Inalsa for fees related to that bankruptcy proceeding.

In a statement, the institution points out that this service was also awarded to him “bypassing the contracting laws”, and insist that they have been able to access this information after requesting a copy of all the documentation from the Court, “because San Gines' lawyer friend refused to hand it over to Inalsa.”

To the information that they have been releasing in recent days, they now add this one related to the Consortium, where they state that “no contracting file was processed for the designation of Ignacio Calatayud as the entity's lawyer in that procedure, so it is a verbal contract made by Pedro San Ginés in favor of his friend Calatayud for which he obtained enormous benefits.”

“Given the lack of a contracting file, the Lanzarote Water Consortium repeatedly contacted the lawyer himself to provide, at least, a copy of the resolution that agreed to his designation as the entity's lawyer in that incident and the budget or conditions of his hiring, without San Ginés' friend having provided any of those documents, which are also not found in the Consortium's archives, nor in the judicial procedure,” they warn in their statement.

 

“Opaque agreements and lies by San Ginés”

“Pedro San Gines' agreements with his personal friend, Ignacio Calatayud, not only incur serious irregularities because they violate the contracting rules applicable to public administrations, as is the case of the Water Consortium (formed by the Cabildo and the seven municipalities), but they were also carried out in a totally opaque manner, to the point that there is no documentation on these contracts in the Consortium and the only one who knew of their existence was San Ginés,” they maintain.

In addition, they denounce that “the lack of transparency of the contracts between the former president and his lawyer friend reached such a point that on October 15, 2015, the former president of the Consortium doubly lied to the opposition when answering questions about the contracts and payments made to Calatayud, since San Ginés indicated that he had only charged 86,000 euros for the bankruptcy proceedings, when in reality he had charged 154,000 euros for the proceedings and another 800,000 euros for the bankruptcy incidents, hiding the contracts of his friend both from Inalsa and from the Consortium, which only San Ginés himself knew about.”

In addition, they emphasize that “unlike what happened in Inalsa, the Water Consortium has never been subject to judicial intervention (a possibility that the law does not allow either), so this new contract that San Ginés also made with his friend Calatayud, designating him as the Consortium's lawyer in one of the incidents of the proceedings, did not require any type of agreement from the bankruptcy administrators.” 

Therefore, they warn that San Ginés “cannot, in this new matter, have the possibility (lacking a legal basis) of trying to hide behind the judicial administrators or pass the responsibility to the Board of Directors which, in the case of the public water company, limited itself to accepting the hiring of his friend, without establishing either the fees or the conditions of the contract, which were the exclusive responsibility of San Ginés.”

In the case of the Consortium, they conclude that San Ginés “has violated the contracting rules by making a direct assignment to his friend Calatayud, ignoring the contracting procedure and the bidding for the contract, given the high amount of the same (more than 300,000 euros), and has done so by resorting to a verbal contract, expressly prohibited by the legislation applicable to public contracting and without any knowledge on the part of the governing bodies of the Lanzarote Water Consortium.”

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