Of the almost 400,000 euros that the San Bartolomé City Council paid to the companies of José Vicente Montesinos, at least 87,000 could have ended up directly in the hands of the City Council's comptroller, Carlos Sáenz. That is what the businessman himself confessed and what the investigating judge of the Montecarlo case, Ricardo Fiestras Gil, maintains, who considers that there are rational indications that the businessman paid bribes in cash to the comptroller. Thus, in addition to the crimes of prevarication, fraud and/or embezzlement that he imputes to the other three defendants in this part of the case, the judge also imputes another crime of bribery to Sáenz and Montesinos.
In the order in which he ends the investigation, the magistrate details the allegedly fraudulent payments that Montesinos received from the San Bartolomé City Council through two companies. On the one hand, Progestril, which charged 307,440 euros based on two contracts signed with the City Council, for alleged services that, according to the judge, were not even provided. On the other hand, Recingest, which received 87,000 euros, charging 20 different invoices to the City Council without even any type of contract to support it.
In the case of payments to this second company, the judge points out that when the transfer from the City Council arrived in the Recingest account, José Vicente Montesinos "withdrew" the money and "gave it in cash to the comptroller". With this, according to the judicial order, the businessman managed to ensure that Carlos Sáenz "continued without putting any objection or obstacle to the payments that the City Council made" to his other company.
Months after being arrested, Montesinos himself declared in court that of the money he received from Recingest he "did not take anything" and that these amounts were "to pay Carlos (Sáenz)". In addition, he confessed that of the cash withdrawals that appear in his companies' accounts, "some were to pay Carlos".
Montesinos reported Sáenz two years before his arrest
During the investigation of this case, the Economic and Fiscal Crime Unit (UDEF) of the National Police detected numerous economic connections between the businessman and the comptroller, as well as operations in which Sáenz handled significant amounts of cash. In addition, Montesinos himself filed a complaint in 2010, two years before being arrested in the Montecarlo case, in which he accused Carlos Sáenz of demanding illegal commissions to pay invoices that, according to him, the City Councils of Arrecife and San Bartolomé owed him.
Montesinos filed that complaint at the Gran Canaria airport police station and even gave details about how Carlos Sáenz asked him to pay one of those alleged bribes, through an intermediary. However, when he was arrested in 2012, he retracted his statement, at least in the part that implicated him in the payment of bribes. What Montesinos did after his arrest was to continue attacking the comptroller Carlos Sáenz and a lawyer who supposedly acted as an intermediary. "They had me extorted. They are criminals," he said after facing a long interrogation, in which he insisted that he "hates corruption", that he "does not accept bribes from anyone" and that is why Carlos Sáenz "blocked the payment of his invoices".
Months later, the businessman returned to testify in court and there he did acknowledge having delivered significant sums of money to the comptroller. At least, the amount of the invoices charged in the name of Recingest. "Carlos said that he did not work for only 1,200 euros," declared Montesinos, who stated that the former mayor, Miguel Martín, the treasurer of San Bartolomé, Luis Manuel Rodríguez, and the former Finance Councilor, Javier Betancort, knew about this situation.
"Carlos Sáenz needed more people to do this," said Montesinos, who added that "the councilor knew what and why he was signing and the treasurer knew it was for Carlos", since he assures that he told him personally. "Here everything is known and no one can say that they sign without knowing," he insisted.
Carlos Sáenz, guarantor of a Progestril mortgage
For its part, the UDEF investigation located at least two deposits made by José Montesinos and one of his companies (Recingest) in an account of Carlos Sáenz, for an amount of 3,000 euros each. When asked about this in court, Montesinos denied it, assuring that it was "impossible", while Sáenz justified it by stating that "perhaps he had lent him some money" and the businessman was "returning it".
In addition, the investigation maintains that Sáenz would have moved significant amounts of cash. Among other things, he himself acknowledged that he paid several installments of a mortgage loan, of between 2,000 and 5,000 euros each, with cash. According to Carlos Sáenz, he previously took the money from another account. However, the UDEF maintains that there are no accounting entries for the withdrawals of that money. "I have often taken 5,000 euros from Santander and it has to be reflected in the current account. The Police will not have looked well if they say no," Sáenz responded when asked about this. To all this is added the fact that the holder of that mortgage was not Carlos Sáenz, despite the fact that he paid several installments, but Progestril.
The mortgage was requested to buy a property in Fuerteventura, worth 500,000 euros. And the guarantor in that operation was the comptroller of the city councils from which this company charged hundreds of thousands of euros. In addition, according to Carlos Sáenz declared in court, "on some occasions" he was required as guarantor, to face the payments of that loan. And those payments are the ones he made with cash deposits.
A possible front man
"Is Progestril a front man and are you really the owner?", the prosecutor Ignacio Stampa asked Carlos Sáenz during one of the interrogations. And one of the things that the investigation maintained, although it is not decided in this already closed part of San Bartolomé, is that the comptroller could have used Montesinos or other people linked to those companies to hide his true assets.
Both Sáenz and Montesinos are also charged in another part of the Montecarlo case, for the payments that the businessman received from the Arrecife City Council, where Carlos Sáenz was also (and still is) comptroller. When the government group changed in San Bartolomé, in 2007, Montesinos stopped working in that municipality and began to provide alleged services for Arrecife. And it was in those dates when, for example, he paid some of the installments of the Progestril mortgage
In addition to having been a guarantor and having paid several installments of that mortgage ("it would be a blunder, but it was to return the personal favor that Montesinos did me when separating. Perhaps it was a foolish thing", declared the comptroller), the Udef also found other links between both. Among other things, Sáenz was paying for the insurance of a car of the company in which Montesinos appeared as administrator. According to Sáenz himself admitted, the businessman lent him the car for his then partner to use. "He lent me the car and I paid the insurance for six months. That one from a Montesinos company. It was an old car," he declared. In addition, Sáenz even appears as attorney of Progestril in an insurance policy contracted by this company.
Ten months in pre-trial detention
After his arrest in Operation Montecarlo, both Carlos Sáenz and José Montesinos were sent to pre-trial detention, where they remained for ten months until being released pending trial. In the case of Sáenz, he is charged in all parts of the Montecarlo case (in addition to two of the Unión case, one of whose trials has just been held), while Montesinos is charged in the San Bartolomé case and in one of Arrecife.
The investigation of the Montecarlo case began with an anonymous complaint filed with the Prosecutor's Office by an employee of the Arrecife City Council. In that complaint, he warned about allegedly fraudulent payments to José Vicente Montesinos and other companies by the City Council.
In parallel, the complaint that Montesinos had filed in 2010 in a Police Station in Gran Canaria had given rise to judicial proceedings, in which he ended up being charged, and he testified before the Provincial Prosecutor's Office of Las Palmas in March 2011. Thus, both investigations "crossed" and Montesinos' complaint was incorporated into the summary of Montecarlo, providing new elements to this case.
In addition, the San Bartolomé City Council has open different lawsuits in administrative litigation with the businessman. On the one hand, Montesinos went to court to claim the payment of six invoices worth almost 50,000 euros, whose payment was paralyzed by the new government group. In addition, after dispensing with Montesinos' services in 2007, the City Council itself initiated a lawsuit against the businessman claiming about 80,000 euros, understanding that he had kept money that did not correspond to him, from the collection of taxes.
