The parliamentary groups have requested that the former regional president Ángel Víctor Torres and Koldo García, identified as an intermediary between the people who supplied sanitary material to the Canary Health Service, appear before the commission investigating the Mascarillas case in the Canary Islands.
The commission's board, which was established on May 20 in the Parliament of the Canary Islands, examined this Monday the proposals of attendees and requests for reports and documentation that have been presented by the parliamentary groups, to which it has requested correction or rectification of errors in their demands.
The president of the Board, Raúl Acosta, of the Agrupación Herreña Indepediente, has specified in this regard that "some of the requests for attendees or requested documentation have not been duly accredited, and the groups have been asked to rectify or correctly justify them." Once the responses have been received, the Board will supervise them on June 5 so that two days later, on June 7, they will meet again to approve the work plan and define the list of attendees and the request for documentation.
In principle, it has been planned to summon 73 attendees, of which 14 would attend the commission in the current session period, until July 25, so that the work continues until the end of the year, trying to "link" the appearances in the morning, Raúl Acosta indicated.
The parliamentarian has admitted that many of the names requested by the groups are "coincident" and therefore there will be a "high number of attendees, much higher than expected", although he has not referred to any expressly until the work plan has been approved. In this regard, he pointed out that "when the work plan is approved, it will be decided whether the commission sessions are held behind closed doors or open doors."
The groups that support the Canarian Government (CC, PP, ASG and AHI) have requested, among others, the appearance of people who acted by having responsibilities in the Health Emergency Management Committee, such as Ángel Víctor Torres, the former vice president and Minister of Finance Román Rodríguez, the former Ministers of Health Teresa Cruz, Julio Pérez and Blas Trujillo, and the former director of the Canary Health Service Antonio Olivera.
For its part, the Socialist group also requests the presence of Torres and Olivera (but not that of Koldo García) and also requests that Agustín Manrique de Lara y Benítez de Lugo, president of the Gran Canaria Business Circle and president of the Canarian Confederation of Businessmen during the pandemic, appear in order to explain the steps taken during the pandemic to acquire sanitary material.
It also requests the presence of the experts from the health emergency management committee during the pandemic Lluis Serra and Beatriz González López-Varcárcel, and Miguel Ángel Ponce, current manager of the Doctor Negrín University Hospital of Gran Canaria and deputy of the popular parliamentary group in the X Legislature, in order to know their actions during the pandemic. For its part, Nueva Canarias, which in the past legislature was part of the regional government headed by the PSOE, agrees to request the appearance of the members of the committee of experts Lluis Serra, Beatriz González López Valcárcel and Antonio Sierra and also requests that Conrado Domínguez, former director of the Canary Health Service, attend Parliament.
In addition, it requests the appearance of the then ministers Noemí Santana, Manuela Armas and Yaiza Castilla, together with the former general director of Heritage and Contracting José Julián Isturitz. For its part, Vox is the only group that has requested the appearance of the former Minister of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda José Luis Ábalos, in addition to his then advisor Koldo García and the businessmen allegedly linked to the purchase of sanitary material Víctor Gonzalo de Aldama, Rayco González and Marco Antonio Navarro Tacoronte.