The trial of the well-known "Forelan" case, held in the Arrecife Courts by the Provincial Court of Las Palmas, has been extended over two days. During Thursday, the judge heard the statements of the accused, as well as a long series of witnesses including experts, students of the courses for the unemployed, teachers, inspectors, businessmen, institutional representatives, and of course, the complainant, Gerardo Fontes (former president of Aetur).
The prosecution accuses them of crimes of "misappropriation" and "crime against the Public Treasury", for which it has requested a sentence of ten years in prison, fines of more than 500,000 euros and the return of 600,000 euros to Forelan (Island Foundation for Training and Employment). To this request, the private prosecution has added five more months for "use of false documentation".
CASE BY CASE
In the conclusions of the hearing, the prosecutor, Miguel Pallarés, asked the court for a "courageous" sentence and spoke of a "business network to suck all the subsidy" from the Government of the Canary Islands and the European Social Fund for the organization of courses for the unemployed. "They have seen the gold mine," the prosecutor said. "We control Forelan and we keep an exceptional profit margin." To reach this conclusion, Pallarés has analyzed the statements of each of the accused, as well as the data revealed by the witnesses during more than twelve hours of trial.
According to the prosecutor, the statement of Basilio González, who during the year 1995 was president of Forelan, has revealed that he worked for two companies that had a direct relationship with the Foundation, "with a salary well above the average", that is, 300,000 pesetas per month. These companies -Sergeslan and Copy Shop- were managed, in turn, by two colleagues from the top of Forelan: Elena Ángel (then secretary) and Valetín Elvira (then administrator). The prosecutor has been clear in pointing out that "there is no reliable record of any work activity" by Basilio González and Eugenia Villalba (then vice president of Forelan), both hired within these companies.
The second defendant, Elena Ángel, admitted before the judge that she had established Sergeslan to open a perfumery. According to the expert report of the Tax Inspector Manuel González, Elena Ángel obtained a profit margin of 73 percent through the courses that her company supposedly taught, "a margin that is outside of all business parameters if there is nothing else behind it", the prosecutor added. The former secretary of Forelan also declared before the court that she had prepared some 30 or 40 manuals for these courses, but for the prosecutor, "there is not a single invoice that can demonstrate the added value of these manuals".
The prosecutor has admitted a less direct involvement on the part of Eugenia Villalba in her role as vice president of Forelan, "although she was giving her approval to a habitual practice of endorsing the courses to Elena Ángel". In addition, according to the prosecutor's office, her testimony proves that the address of Sergeslan coincided with the private address of Elena Ángel, where Eugenia Villalba claimed to go to work.
In the case of the fourth defendant, Valentín Elvira, the prosecutor has assured that "he was matching the economic need of his company" with Forelan and that according to the expert report there is no evidence of the existence of the bookstore and the training center that supposedly belonged to the company of which he was the sole administrator: Copy Shop. For his part, the accused has assured at all times that the inspector Mariano González did not come to him to try to find the address of both premises, and that "everyone in Arrecife knew where the bookstore and the academy were".
THE EXPERT REPORT
The expert report prepared by the Tax Inspector Mariano González has been one of the most controversial points of this trial. According to one of the defense lawyers, Manuel Fajardo, the expert "was not from the Public Prosecutor's Office, he was the prosecutor". The lawyer has tried to discredit the report of the Tax Inspector due to a rectification made after issuing the first report. "Mariano himself has acknowledged that he exceeded his powers, making assessments about the facts," the defense added. "He was convinced that there was a subsidy fraud".
For his part, Mariano González related the events that took place from 1998, after Gerardo Fontes went to the Prosecutor's Office to report irregularities within Forelan. González explained that he had contacted the four defendants to request a series of documents and verify the commercial relations of Sergeslan and Copy Shop with Forelan. According to the expert, the signature of the vice president did not appear in any of the documents provided, only in a series of payrolls that were not made in real time, as the change of type of the euro demonstrated. Therefore, and as González explained, there was no record of the performance of any function in these companies by their workers.
Mariano González referred to the impossibility of locating the bookstore and the training center of Valentín Elvira, who claimed that he provided material and services (courses) to Forelan. "In 1996 the only client of Copy Shop was Forelan, and at the times when Forelan was being invoiced there was no academy", González said. Another of the main arguments of the expert report is the incongruity between material acquired and sold by Copy Shop. According to González, there are sales invoices for language books, but there are no purchase invoices for these books.
As for Sergeslan, Mariano González has stated that the company "is awarded a series of courses in whose participation is symbolic since the courses are invoiced by third companies". According to the report, Sergeslan invoices Forelan more than 8,700,000 pesetas for the preparation of teaching material, and another similar amount for the monitoring and control of courses. Of these amounts, as the prosecutor echoes, "Sergeslan only has an invoice for the preparation of manuals for an amount of 400,000 pesetas".
In total, the Public Prosecutor's Office accuses Valentín Elvira of misappropriation of more than 62 and a half million pesetas, "with the participation of Basilio González and Eugenia Villalba, employed by Copy Shop". For her part, Elena Ángel is accused of misappropriation of almost 38 million pesetas.
THE COURSES
More than a dozen witnesses have highlighted the alleged irregularities that took place in the courses that Forelan supposedly organized with the participation of other companies. Some students who only attended these courses in the first weeks, later appeared as approved in a series of reports that were sent to Icfem (Canary Institute of Training and Employment).
Apparently, the requirements imposed by Icfem demanded a minimum number of students and hours taught to grant Forelan the subsidies from the European Social Fund and the Government of the Canary Islands. According to the lawyer for the prosecution, these reports could be falsified to obtain these aids.
During the trial, an inspector, Antonio Hernández, also testified, who spoke of the alleged "pressure" he received when preparing these reports. Although shortly after he also stated that the "phantom" hours that he could never register, could be taught during the weekends. Something that none of the students called to testify could confirm.
On the part of the defense, the lawyer Manuel Fajardo has insisted on the lack of representativeness of the witnesses, who belonged to two courses taught by Forelan, of the 400 that were given.
AETUR
One of the points pointed out by the defense during the conclusions of the trial has been the involvement of Aetur in the case. As confirmed during the trial by the former president of the Business Association, Gerardo Fontes, the complaint to Forelan came from the "rumors in the street" about alleged irregularities within the Foundation. For this reason, a list of the companies related to Forelan was requested, among which were Sergeslan and Copy Shop.
However, the defense has insisted that within this list there were other five companies linked to Jerónimo Quevedo, a member of Aetur who had also been part of Forelan. "From the moment Forelan stops giving these courses, Aetur is the great beneficiary", Manuel Fajardo has assured.
THE ACCUSED
Broken voice and impotence when declaring for the last time before the judge. Basilio González, Elena Ángel, Eugenia Villalba and Valentín Elvira have agreed in pointing out the social and media "harassment" they have suffered for almost ten years. "And someone has had the complicity of passing all the reports to the media during this time", Elvira pointed out during his statement.
"At one point we saw ourselves in the need to lend a hand through a company that was already established", Elena Ángel affirmed, denying any profit motive. "We have given training to more than six thousand people, maybe we have not done things well administratively, but at that time nobody made contracts".
The trial has been seen for sentencing.
ACN Press
