The president and joint managing director of the company Hotel Princesa S.L., Rosa María Rosa Martín, has joined the list of defendants in the Stratvs winery case, which now reaches almost twenty. The head of the Court of First Instance Number 5, Silvia Muñoz, has agreed to summon her to testify on February 24, to answer for an alleged crime of attempted fraud.
In an order dated February 11, the judge adopts this measure in response to the request made by the prosecutor, Ignacio Stampa, who requested the indictment of the president and CEO and the summons as witnesses of all the members of the Board of Directors of Hotel Princesa Yaiza S.L. during the year 2012.
This request arises from one of the many crimes that are being investigated around this winery, related to an alleged attempted fraud against the State Tax Administration Agency. According to the investigation, the Princesa Yaiza hotel had a debt with the Treasury, due to a tax inspection that was carried out in 2011, and to avoid payment, it presented as a guarantee for the debt a mortgage on the property registration 9606, belonging to another family company, BTL Lanzarote (formerly "Juan Francisco Rosa e Hijos S.L."), where the Stratvs winery was supposedly located.
However, one of the facts that this criminal case has brought to the table is that the winery is not even really located on that plot, which has practically no value as it is rustic land. Within the framework of this criminal case, the Tax Agency itself has sent a report to the Court in which it maintains that Juan Francisco Rosa consciously tried to deceive the Treasury with this operation, offering as a guarantee a plot with a value that had nothing to do with the declared value.
Order to the Commercial Registry
Juan Francisco Rosa (who is the owner and CEO of BTL, and one of the main owners of Princesa Yaiza) was until now the only person charged with this crime, but the name of Rosa María Rosa Martín has been added to his, who at that time was the highest responsible person of the hotel company and has held relevant positions in several family businesses.
In response to the Prosecutor's request, the judge has also requested that an order be issued to the Commercial Registry to identify all the people who were part of the Board of Directors of the company Princesa Yaiza in the year in which that operation was carried out, 2012, and that it be "certified in which agreement of the Board of Directors the offer and constitution of unilateral mortgage by BTL Lanzarote SL was adopted as a guarantee of the debt of the entity Hotel Princesa Yaiza S.A. with the State Tax Administration Agency, or issue a negative certification of non-existence".
In addition, it requests that a "copy of the notarial act that includes the meeting of the Board of Directors of the entity Hotel Princesa Yaiza S.A. held in Yaiza on December 11, 2013" be issued.
"Rational indications of criminality"
In the order in which he ordered the closure of the winery, on December 20, the judge stated that there are "rational indications of criminality" and that Stratvs was operating "in the exercise of a criminal activity, whose activity lacks any type of authorization, lacking any activity and control from the administrative and sanitary point of view", including alleged illegal discharges of wastewater and the consequent contamination, about which several reports had been warning for years, without the institutions involved acting in this regard.
But in addition, among other things, the judge also warned of the "repeated constitution of mortgage guarantees on a property simulating that the winery is built on it, when it does not conform to reality." In fact, according to the order, Stratvs actually sits on another property, on which Juan Francisco Rosa "has not justified to this day the slightest ownership".
This fact was highlighted as a result of the complaint filed by a member of the Negrín family, who has appeared as a victim in the case. According to the investigation, this family owned part of the land where Stratvs was built, so Rosa is also charged with a crime of usurpation, in addition to others of fraud, falsehood and crimes against the Environment, against Land Management and against Historical Heritage.
"Reality surpasses fiction, in the sense that it is an authentic and permanent deception during the last 15 years", in which "the documentation has been incessantly falsified", the prosecutor pointed out in the appearance in which the closure of the winery was requested.
Identity simulation and falsification of cadastral data
"By way of example and without being exhaustive", the judge stated in the order in which he ordered the closure, "we can cite the repeated simulation of the real identity of the promoter, the false contribution of the cadastral plot data, the certifications of works in accordance with the project against reality, the changes in cadastral ownership, the fraudulent alteration of the boundaries, the repeated constitution of mortgage guarantees on a property simulating that the winery is built on it when it does not conform to reality, and others whose tortuous procedure indicate that there would be full awareness that the works and activities were and are incompatible with the affected land".
Even, according to the judge, "it has been intended to create the appearance that Rosa Marrero, through her companies, is the owner of the land on which she carried out the construction, a circumstance that is particularly relevant in the present case, not only because there are legitimate owners who have appeared as injured parties, but because (Juan Francisco Rosa) has not justified to this day the slightest ownership over the registered property" on which the winery sits.
In addition to Juan Francisco Rosa and the company BTL itself, owner of the winery, another 17 people are already charged in the case. Among them is the architect who designed Stratvs and various politicians and technicians from the Government of the Canary Islands, the Yaiza City Council and the Cabildo of Lanzarote who protected or allowed these works. According to the case, Stratvs received illegal licenses, but also what was built is nothing like what had actually been authorized.