The judge investigating the criminal case for the seizure of the Montaña Roja desalination plant, Jerónimo Alonso, has decided to open a separate piece, after detecting new indications of crime related to the hiring of Ignacio Calatayud. The lawyer, as highlighted by this investigation, was the one who advised Pedro San Ginés to carry out the seizure, while at the same time working for Canal Gestión, which is the company to which the plants seized from Club Lanzarote were handed over.
In this new case, the magistrate points out that "logically" Calatayud himself and the president of the Cabildo and the Island Water Council, Pedro San Ginés, will be "investigated". It should be remembered that both are already accused in the main procedure, and will now also be investigated in this new piece. "Reasons of convenience and utility advise the fragmentation of the procedure, in order to avoid the negative consequences that the formation of a macro-cause may determine," the order states, dated January 12.
As the judge explains, the new proceedings will aim at "the investigation of the hiring by the Lanzarote Island Water Council of the lawyer Ignacio Calatayud Prats for the provision of professional services, without prejudice to what may be agreed, as the investigation progresses, with respect to other facts or persons." In his order, the magistrate names up to seven crimes that are typified in the Penal Code "to combat corruption in onerous contracts."
Calatayud's double advice
The order separating this new piece refers to the "legal report" made by Calatayud, which is the only one that exists endorsing the seizure and which was actually drawn up when this measure had already been executed. According to San Ginés, this same lawyer, with whom he has acknowledged that he has a personal friendship, had advised him "verbally" before the seizure. Afterwards, he asked him to put that advice in writing in a report. However, the judge points out that in order to carry out this report, Calatayud was not hired by the Island Water Council "in accordance with the Execution Bases of the Budget applicable to the corresponding year."
The order argues that in that hiring, "the minimum procedural requirements" could have been omitted, thus eluding "the controls that the procedure itself establishes". And these controls, according to the judge, are aimed, among other things, at "preserving the objectivity and impartiality of a public administration." Specifically, he refers to Article 103 of the Constitution, which establishes that access to public office must conform to "the principles of merit and capacity" and to the "system of incompatibilities and guarantees for impartiality in the exercise of their functions."
Among other documents that the judge orders to be incorporated into this new piece are the statements made as defendants by Calatayud himself and Pedro San Ginés. Among other things, the judge asked the president if Ignacio Calatayud was also a legal advisor to Canal Gestión while he was advising him to carry out the seizure of the Club Lanzarote plants. "I don't know," replied San Ginés, who on several occasions has described this fact as "irrelevant," when the media and several opposition parties have asked him the same question.
The lawyer received 116,000 euros from Canal in two years
Finally, the confirmation that Calatayud was indeed working for Canal Gestión while advising San Ginés came from the person who was the manager of the company, Gerardo Díaz, and later also from the lawyer himself. Both acknowledged in court that Calatayud worked for the company that kept the seized plants (and that a few months ago had to be returned to Club Lanzarote by court order). In addition, Ignacio Calatayud assured that "everyone" knew that he worked for Canal Gestión, that San Ginés "knew it too" and that he "never hid it."
According to this judicial investigation and the documentation requested by the magistrate, Canal Gestión paid Calatayud 116,000 euros in less than two years. On the one hand, he paid him 3,300 euros per month for the services provided to the company. On the other hand, he even hired him to advise the Insular Water Consortium of Lanzarote.
Specifically, Calatayud was to advise the Monitoring and Control Commission created by the Water Consortium, precisely to "monitor" the work of Canal Gestión and compliance with the contract. In this way, Canal chose and hired the person who was going to advise the public institution to supervise its work. In addition, the company then deducted that money from the annual payment that it had to pay to the Water Consortium, so that the payment ended up being made with public money.
Three invoices presented on the same day
As for the payments that Calatayud received directly from the Water Council, the judge refers to three invoices, all of them presented on the same day and linked to the seizure. One of them includes the payment for the "advice" to San Ginés. Curiously, although Calatayud's written report is dated September 2014, the lawyer did not submit the invoice to the Cabildo until July 2015. And he did so only a few days after the courts annulled the seizure and also ordered the criminal complaint against San Ginés and the managers of the Council and the Consortium to be processed, seeing indications of crime in their actions.
In that report of September 2014, Calatayud not only pointed out that the seizure that had already been carried out was "viable", but also recorded in writing that he had previously given verbal advice to the president on this issue. "Prior to the seizure, this lawyer was consulted, who considered that said measure was legally viable," he stated in the opinion.
In the invoice for that advice, presented almost a year later, Calatayud also included his fees as lawyer of the Council in the procedure in which the Court dictated precautionary measures last July, annulling the seizure. In addition, on the same day Ignacio Calatayud presented two other invoices, both for 1,605 euros. One corresponded to his hiring to carry out the main procedure after the lawsuit of Club Lanzarote against the seizure, and the other to the one undertaken by this same company against the delivery of its plants to Canal Gestión. In this case, the lawyer also lost the lawsuit and the courts ruled in favor of Club Lanzarote.
A seizure based on a "non-existent infraction"
Meanwhile, the criminal case, from which a new piece has now been ordered to be separated, and which already had five defendants, has also continued its course. In the order agreeing to this measure, the judge points out that San Ginés' decision to seize the plants would have been based on a "non-existent infraction" by Club Lanzarote. In addition, he stresses that, in any case, the alleged "production of industrial water without authorization" would have constituted a "minor infraction", as stated in the resolution signed by San Ginés ordering the seizure.
"It would deviate from the intended purpose (since the administrative infractions imputed to the entity Club Lanzarote could only suppose the imposition of a fine of 7,600 euros), it would lack legal provision and it would have been executed without having the mandatory judicial authorization", insists the order. Thus, recalling also what was pointed out by the Provincial Court, when it ordered to process this complaint, it concludes that there are "evident indications of injustice and spurious use of the precautionary measure."
Along with Calatayud and Pedro San Ginés, who remains charged with a crime of prevarication and another of coercion, the main procedure includes the former managers of the Council and the Consortium, José Juan Hernández Duchemín and Domingo Pérez Callero, and the secretary of the Corporation, Pancho Perdomo.
