The documentation provided by the Court, following the investigation opened by Inalsa, has revealed that the lawyer Ignacio Calatayud has invoiced almost one million euros in fees in the creditors' contest of the Lanzarote water company, which the current Inalsa managers consider "an authentic scandal of enormous proportions." In this regard, they emphasize that "these are amounts that are five times the amounts that were known and that both the previous CEO, Pedro San Ginés, and his lawyer-friend, have kept hidden during all this time."
In a statement, Inalsa recalls that Calatayud had already charged 151,600 euros, as a result of the budgets accepted by Pedro San Ginés, as fees for the common phase and the agreement phase of the creditors' contest, which form the main judicial procedure. In addition, we must add the 82,606 euros that he has recently claimed for a bankruptcy incident, which would raise the total amount invoiced to the public water company to 234,206 euros.
"The documentation collected in the Court, after the refusal of San Ginés' lawyer-friend to provide Inalsa with a copy of the liquidation and agreements reached in the incidents of the creditors' contest, has allowed progress in the investigation that the public water company is carrying out, discovering that Calatayud has also charged 749,000 euros for fees corresponding to the incidents of which he refused to provide information to his client, Inalsa, so Calatayud's fees in the bankruptcy procedure amount to a total of 983,206.95 euros," the company says.
Charged five times more for the incidents than for the contest
"These very high fees, which Calatayud systematically hid from Inalsa, are justified by his participation in the incidents of the contest, procedures that are part of the bankruptcy process for all purposes and that are processed before the same Court that handles the creditors' contest, but that are resolved independently," they explain.
In this regard, they emphasize that he ended up charging five times more for the incidents than for the contest itself, thanks to the "preferential treatment granted to him by the former president and CEO of the public company, Pedro San Ginés, who annulled an initial contract of January 27, 2010, which included the bankruptcy incidents, to formalize a new one, on March 15, 2010, which expressly excluded them" from the budget.
Precisely the exclusion of the “bankruptcy incidents” from that initial budget is the argument that Ignacio Calatayud is using to now claim 82,000 euros from Inalsa for another bankruptcy incident, but the new judicial documentation to which the Lanzarote public company has recently had access, after having removed Calatayud from the procedures and appointing new representatives, has revealed that San Ginés' lawyer friend has also charged 749,000 euros for other bankruptcy incidents, which in this case he could have charged to the opposing party.
"A deliberate concealment strategy"
Inalsa recalls that "lCalatayud's persistent refusal to provide information on the procedures in which he had represented the company and to provide the documentation thereof, led to his dismissal as lawyer of the bankruptcy procedure, appointing new professionals for its representation."
Thus, the new team appointed for the legal representation of Inalsa has had to appear both in the bankruptcy procedure and in the incidents that are part of it to access the documentation in the files and, "after an arduous and intense work of compilation, analysis and verification, to be able to report to the public company on the real state of these files and the incidents to which they were subjected."
In its statement, the public company also points out that "the attitude of the former president and CEO of the company is not understood, who has publicly defended his friend justifying his new claim for fees to be paid another 82,000 euros that he claims for another incident, when precisely San Ginés is the only one of the former Inalsa managers who knew the enormous amounts of money that Calatayud has charged for incidents of the contest using the modification of the contract that San Ginés accepted."