He handled legal proceedings for the Yaiza City Council and at the same time represented the developers, but also, he charged as an advisor to the City Council "in matters of administrative law, and more specifically urban planning", according to the investigation of the "Reyes case". However, during the investigation of the case, Felipe Fernández Camero has systematically denied having influenced the urban planning policy that was followed during the Mayoralty of José Francisco Reyes.
Now, the Prosecutor's Office continues to consider Fernández Camero as the alleged "inducer" of the allegedly criminal conduct of the former mayor, but asks to dismiss the charges against him for alleged crimes of urban planning prevarication and bribery, since his direct participation has not been proven. Something especially difficult in this case, since he was not really "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 does maintain the charges against Felipe Fernández Camero for an alleged crime of embezzlement of public funds. In fact, he has requested that another procedure be opened with new proceedings, in which Camero himself would be charged, in addition to the former mayor, José Francisco Reyes, and the secretary of the City Council, Vicente Bartolomé Fuentes.
The investigation maintains that, apart from the fees that Fernández Camero received for the contentious-administrative trials in which he represented the Yaiza City Council, and for the criminal proceedings in which he defended Reyes and some of the municipal technicians, he also received other payments from the City Council, as "legal advice".
He collected that money between 1996 and 2008, "directly as a natural person or as administrator of the company Adelfas 24 S.L.", and the Prosecutor's Office considers that it could constitute a crime of embezzlement of public funds. And it is that if his participation in the alleged urban planning prevarication is ruled out, due to lack of evidence that this advice really existed, it could be understood that the payments were allegedly fraudulent.
"Quasi-omnipresent"
Regarding the other crimes that have been imputed to Fernández Camero until now, the prosecutor's writing maintains that "the criminal indications certainly exist, but without sufficient consolidation" so that the Prosecutor's Office "can sustain the accusation against him".
In this regard, the Prosecutor's Office emphasizes that Camero has developed "a quasi-omnipresent role", defending both the City Council and the urban developers who received the licenses that were annulled by the courts, as well as in the defense of one and the other in the criminal proceedings, where he later became charged himself.
In addition, it expressly refers to one of the cases, that of the Marina Rubicón Marina, and emphasizes that he defended "in the name of the City Council the urban interests of the private developers, who were also his clients, with greater virulence than those of the administration itself". As an example, the Prosecutor's Office emphasizes that he requested that a bond be imposed on the person who denounced this work, despite the fact that not even the businessmen themselves had requested it, and that he contributed to that process, "knowingly, information contrary to reality".
The Prosecutor's Office also considers "surprising" the "access that he has shown to have throughout this case" to documentation of the City Council's files, "which not even the City Council itself had", as well as the "confluence of economic-real estate interests" that he had with Juan Francisco Rosa, "at least in the company Lanzasuiza S.L.".
In the same line, it highlights that the City Council and the developers, who were also clients of Fernández Camero's office, maintained identical legal criteria in the defense of the licenses that were later annulled, and that the City Council had "a permanent and objectified strategy of concealment of transcendental information, and of mandatory and obligatory compliance", which allowed to avoid "the control or supervision instruments that could have prevented the granting" of those licenses. And all this, while "the municipal authority to whom Felipe Fernández Camero supposedly advised", "violated the prohibition of granting licenses, when said power had been suspended".
However, none of those charged in the case, neither the former mayor nor the four technicians of the City Council, have linked Fernández Camero with the granting of those licenses and have denied having been influenced by his criteria. In addition, there is no written record of this advice, so the charges of bribery and prevarication will be dismissed, although he will continue to be charged with alleged embezzlement of public funds, for those payments he received from the City Council as alleged "advisor".
Other pending cases
In addition to the "Reyes case", the lawyer Felipe Fernández Camero is also charged in other cases, such as the La Bufona case. In addition, he was arrested in the framework of the "Unión case", for which he is currently released on bail of 100,000 euros.
In that procedure, among other things, the allegedly irregular contracts and payments to the company Urbaser by the Arrecife City Council are being investigated, when Fernández Camero was secretary of that Corporation. In this case, he is being investigated for alleged crimes of bribery, influence peddling and alteration of public tenders.
