The Yate case is ready to go to trial, but the investigation will continue in the two separate pieces that this procedure has given rise to: one for the allegedly illegal payments to Felipe Fernández Camero from the Yaiza City Council and another for the residential licenses granted in the Playa Blanca Partial Plan.
Thus, the eleven defendants who will sit on the bench in the Yate case and the request for penalties of up to 25 years in prison do not put an end to the investigation into the massive granting of illegal licenses in Playa Blanca. And it is that some of the new fronts that were found during the investigation will be resolved in independent cases and trials.
On the one hand, as requested by the Prosecutor's Office two years ago, the judge investigating the Yate case, and who has just ordered the opening of oral trial, has also agreed to separate a piece focused only on the residential licenses granted by José Francisco Reyes in the Playa Blanca Partial Plan between 2004 and 2007. Its detailed analysis justifies the opening of another procedure, according to the Prosecutor's Office in its indictment submitted in early 2013. Already then, it left the licenses of the Playa Blanca Plan out of that indictment, which still had more than 150 pages, giving an idea of the volume that this case has reached.
What will be judged within the Yate case, together with the illegal hotel licenses and that of the Marina Rubicón marina, is the first permit for that Playa Blanca Partial Plan (that of the urbanization project). The rest of the licenses will give rise to a new accusation, and with it new penalties could be requested for Reyes (for whom the Prosecutor's Office is asking for 25 years in prison only for the central piece of the "Yate" case) and also for the municipal technicians who favorably reported those licenses.
Dozens of illegal licenses
Despite the fact that the Plan was extinguished and could not be developed, Reyes authorized dozens of licenses for the construction of some 600 homes. In the indictment of the "Yate" case, up to 24 licenses granted to different companies in the Playa Blanca Partial Plan are cited. However, they were not even analyzed in detail, given the magnitude that the case was already acquiring, and now they will be investigated in a separate procedure.
To this end, the judge has ordered that the testimony of the actions referring to these licenses be sent to the Dean's Office, so that this new case is distributed to another Court, which will be in charge of resolving the alleged crimes against land planning "or any other that may result from the investigation".
This new case adds to another that was already open in the Court of First Instance Number 5 of Arrecife, as a result of a complaint filed against one of the licenses granted in that same Partial Plan. Specifically, the illegal licenses that Reyes granted to his party colleague Pedro de Armas are being investigated. In that parallel case, José Francisco Reyes, the then secretary of the City Council, Vicente Bartolomé Fuentes, and the head of the Technical Office, Antonio Lorenzo, are charged.
Support from the Provincial Court
The other separate piece of the Yate case was opened about two years ago, for the payments that Felipe Fernández Camero received from the Yaiza City Council. In that piece, both Camero and Reyes and the former secretary of the City Council, Vicente Bartolomé Fuentes, are charged with alleged crimes of malfeasance, in conjunction with embezzlement of public funds. The investigation of this separate piece is in charge of the Investigating Court Number 1 of Arrecife and has the support of the Provincial Court, which in February 2014 ordered the instruction to continue, understanding that there were "criminal indications" that justified it.
Specifically, an irregular hiring of Fernández Camero is being investigated, who charged twice from the Consistory, both as a lawyer in numerous lawsuits, and for an alleged advisory work. Camero received monthly payments from the City Council for years, for services that are suspected of not having been actually provided.
At the time, Fernández Camero was charged in the Yate case as the alleged "inducer" of the former mayor's allegedly criminal conduct. However, in 2012 the Prosecutor's Office requested to dismiss the charges against him for urban planning malfeasance and bribery, since it could not prove his direct participation in the granting of licenses. Something especially difficult in this case, since in reality he was not an "authority or public official", and there is also no, according to the prosecutor, "any written report" in which he advises the granting of the licenses that are being investigated. However, precisely for this reason, the Prosecutor's Office requested to open this new piece for embezzlement of public funds, as there is no record of that advice for which he charged for years from the City Council.
"It does not appear justified, at this procedural moment, that the Yaiza City Council had to resort to the services of the accused on a permanent basis throughout the twelve months of the year and, in addition, hired him as a lawyer in numerous cases", the Provincial Court argued in an order dated January 2014, in which it ordered to continue the instruction and spoke of an "overlap of professional services of a legal nature" and an "irregularity from the legal point of view" in the payments to Camero. It even considered that the situation could "be described as obvious and gross", "in attention to the most elementary regulations in matters of administrative contracting", since there was also no contract that supported those payments.
