Pedro San Ginés has accused the CEO of the Centers for Art, Culture and Tourism (CACT), Benjamín Perdomo, and the president of the Cabildo of Lanzarote, Dolores Corujo, of "trying to deceive" the citizens, the media and the Court itself. According to the vision of the deputy spokesperson for the Canary Coalition Group in the Cabildo of Lanzarote, both "try to evade the control of the Intervention Area of the corporation by lying to citizens and the courts”
In a press release, the deputy spokesperson for the Canary Coalition Group in the Cabildo of Lanzarote, Pedro San Ginés, has added the complaint filed by the Public Business Entity (EPEL) of the CACT to the Administrative Litigation Court. In it, the body asked not to pay an annual fee since it considers that "never" was a concession formalized and that if the Tourist Centers came to have some assets transferred by the highest island body it was "free of charge".
In the press release, San Ginés has invited citizens to read the aforementioned appeal, and "to verify the attempt to deceive the media and the Court itself, with the purpose of escaping the intervention of the Cabildo and increasing profits by eliminating the canon as they have just done in 2022".
San Ginés explained that "it is clear that the government intends to increase the benefits of the CACT by eliminating the canon". He also alludes to the decision of the Cabildo of Lanzarote, "when in 2022 it established zero euros of canon in order to spend the resources available to the EPEL without prior control of Intervention, including the distribution of those benefits among the workers, as if they were shareholders of the company".
According to his version, these workers would have been offered to distribute "five hundred thousand euros, 10% of the five million euros in profits". In addition, the deputy spokesperson for the PP doubts that "the majority of the workforce believes or shares such a measure".
In this sense, the candidate of the Canary Coalition to the Cabildo of Lanzarote, Oswaldo Betancort, has recalled that "in addition to attending to the canon established for the Cabildo, the benefits of the CACT must benefit the entire society of Lanzarote through the transfers of the same to the first corporation, so that it is the plenary who decides what are the social, cultural, sports, employment needs, or any other nature that we must attend to with them”.
Indeed, as stated in the announcement of the filing of the administrative litigation appeal of the CACT against the Tax Network and the bases for the execution of the Budget of the Cabildo of Lanzarote for 2023 that, paradoxically, were approved by Dolores Corujo herself and her government;
The CEO of the CACT, Benjamín Perdomo, considers "illegal the imposition of a consideration to an attachment" - that of the CACT to the EPEL that manages them - precisely the one approved by Corujo and the plenary of the corporation up to three times, "as has been happening since 2004 until it has been questioned with the arrival of the CEO and number three on the list of the PSOE to the Cabildo of Lanzarote, Benjamín Perdomo", San Ginés denounced.
As will be recalled, among the arguments made in the appeal, the CACT requested a precautionary measure to suspend the canon, "which Perdomo said in plenary that had been accepted by the courts, lying for the umpteenth time no less than in his appearance before the highest body of the corporation, in such a way that, far from being so, the courts rejected it and forced the CACT to pay, which they did but forced by the court, and not voluntarily as they presume", said Pedro San Ginés.
But, for the deputy spokesperson of the Nationalist Group in the Cabildo of Lanzarote, "the most serious thing is the real reason that underlies Perdomo's opposition, with the sure consent of Corujo, and that is that among the arguments of both before the courts is not that the canon should be linked to benefits - as they have told the citizens and the media - but the claim of gratuity of the Centers for the EPEL".
Thus, among the arguments of the appeal, it is literally stated that "the attachment of real estate of the Cabildo in favor of the Centers was contemplated in the statutes without consideration of any kind" and, he adds, "the free attachment is formally recorded", thus lying to the court, San Ginés denounced, "because it is false that the statutes of the EPEL speak of gratuity as they assure", and finishing it off assuring that "the canon is not enforceable because there is no concession agreement".
In this sense, Pedro San Ginés has explained that "it is paradoxical that, after twenty years of existence and application of the canon, and that this same government has approved it up to three times in the budgets of 2019, 2020 and 2021, now they intend that the centers be free for the EPEL and the canon is not enforceable".
The only thing certain, the nationalist spokesperson said, "is that the tourist centers are attached to the EPEL by agreement of the Cabildo and this is contemplated in its statutes without any reference to the canon".
"It is true that, according to the report of the General Secretariat of the Cabildo of January 2023, it is not the attachment itself that a priori entails any type of consideration, but that does not mean at all that the free attachment is formally recorded, much less that the plenary of the Cabildo, as owner of the CACT, cannot establish a consideration for the commercial exploitation of the attached assets, as it has been doing for two decades through plenary agreements of its budgets that are executive".
