The former urban planning councilor of Tías (Lanzarote), José Alberto Reyes de León (PSOE) will be in the dock on April 27. The first section of the Provincial Court of Las Palmas will judge him for a crime of document forgery. The Prosecutor's Office is asking for six years in prison.
The events date back to the year 2000, when the Tías City Council initiated a sanctioning procedure against the company Indelasa for installing an aggregate deposit on rustic land, according to the Prosecutor's Office accusation. The City Council ordered the restoration of the altered physical reality, as stated in a report by the Agency for the protection of the urban and natural environment (Apmun).
The work did not have a territorial classification from the Cabildo or a municipal license and the land was classified as potentially productive rustic. Furthermore, there was no request for authorization from the General Directorate of Urban Planning of the Government of the Canary Islands to build a building on rustic land. The Apmun ordered the sealing of the works and urged the City Council to initiate the sanction.
According to the Prosecutor's Office, in August 2001, Reyes de León sent a letter to the Apmun in which it was assured that the sanctioning procedure had concluded with the payment of the sanction and that the works had been legalized. "Said letter was notoriously untrue to the facts", the prosecutor points out.
According to the accusation, due to the nature of the land, the works could not be legalized, as demonstrated by the territorial classification of the Cabildo, which was negative. Furthermore, there was no municipal license and the procedures opened by the City Council did not address the problem of the aggregate deposit, but rather other works related to fencing and planting palm trees.
"With this deception maneuver," says the Prosecutor's Office, "the intention was, ultimately, to make the Apmun see that the municipal corporation of Tías had made appropriate use of its sanctioning power in defense of urban planning legality, preventing the sanctioning action of the Agency and the reparation of the damaged legal order."
SG-ACN