The former mayor of Yaiza and vice president of the PNL, José Francisco Reyes, has been admitted to the Tahiche penitentiary center by order of the magistrate of the Court of Instruction Number 2 of Arrecife, who is investigating the case for the alleged plot to grant illegal licenses in Playa Blanca.
After taking his statement this Sunday for several hours, four days after his arrest, the judge has ordered provisional imprisonment for Reyes, who is charged with alleged crimes of bribery, embezzlement of funds, urban prevarication, influence peddling and money laundering.
His wife, Antonia Torres, whose arrest had been extended, was released this Sunday on charges. The same situation in which his three children had already been, two of them released this Saturday. All of them are accused of an alleged crime of money laundering.
As happened this Saturday, during the day there have also been more than a dozen family members and friends at the doors of the Arrecife Courts, who around 6:30 p.m. have supported Reyes' wife, who has spent four days detained in police facilities.
Three years of investigation
The case being investigated by magistrate María Dolores García Benítez has been open for more than three years and, in addition to José Francisco Reyes, the lawyer Felipe Fernández Camero, the City Council secretary, Vicente Bartolomé Fuentes, and Pablo Carrasco Cabrera, from the Technical Office of the Yaiza City Council, were charged in it until now.
The Public Prosecutor's Office considered that they were all part of a plot dedicated to the massive granting of illegal licenses in Playa Blanca. Within the framework of this investigation, the judge authorized two years ago that a police unit against organized crime (the Udyco) track the assets of the former mayor of Yaiza and his environment, in search of evidence that would demonstrate that he could receive economic benefits by handing out those illegal licenses. And despite the attempts of his defense, Reyes failed to prevent this investigation from being carried out, which last Wednesday led to his arrest, that of his wife and that of three of his children, after a search in several of the family's properties, including Reyes' yacht and home.
With the Udyco report and this police intervention, a further step is taken in trying to demonstrate that the assets of Reyes and his children, who came to have companies in their name with just over 18 years, would come from the money that the former mayor would allegedly have received for granting those illegal licenses.
In search of motivation
Since its origin, this investigation tried to get to the bottom of the reasons that led the former mayor of Yaiza to grant more than 30 building permits and extensions of other expired ones between 1998 and 2003, which have come under suspicion of corruption.
And Reyes authorized around 10,000 new tourist beds for hotels and apartments in the south of the island, going against the Island Plan of Lanzarote, the reports of the Cabildo and even the reports of the technicians of the City Council.
The municipal files for granting illegal licenses confirm the absolutely irregular facts and circumstances that surrounded the granting of permits. Many of them were granted by Reyes on the same day that the licenses were requested, despite the fact that they had negative reports from the City Council technicians themselves and lacked the mandatory and binding report from the Cabildo. Others consisted of the issuance of certificates of obtaining illegal licenses by silence that had negative municipal reports or the granting of fraudulent extensions.
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