Piece number 13 of the "Unión" case already has a written accusation from the Prosecutor's Office, thus becoming the third for which the opening of oral proceedings has been requested within this case. In addition, it will be the first to have the Arrecife City Council's auditor, Carlos Sáenz, in the dock. In total, the Prosecutor's Office formalizes the accusation against four people for the payment of allegedly fraudulent invoices to an electricity company.
The indictment, signed by prosecutor Ignacio Stampa, maintains that the City Council of Arrecife paid 251,293 euros in less than a year for alleged electricity services that were not actually provided. All invoices were paid to the businessman José Daniel Hernández Arráez, for whom the Prosecutor's Office is requesting 5 and a half years in prison for a continued crime of falsification of a commercial document, another of prevarication (as an instigator) and two more of embezzlement of public funds and fraud (as a necessary cooperator).
Along with him, the still auditor of the City Council, Carlos Sáenz, is accused; the then head of the Technical Office, Rafael Arrocha, and the former Finance Councilor, José Miguel Rodríguez. The prosecutor is asking for six years in prison for one of them, for the continued crimes of embezzlement of public funds, fraud and prevarication. In addition, he also demands a penalty of ten years of absolute disqualification for each one and 9 for the businessman, for whom the request for penalties is slightly reduced as he is not a public official.
The indictment also requests that the four defendants return the embezzled amount to the Arrecife City Council "jointly and severally", and that José Daniel Hernández's company, Proyectos y Servicios Lanzarote 2008 S.L. (Proselan), be convicted as jointly and severally liable to respond for the payment of that figure, which amounts to more than 250,000 euros.
A plan to "plunder public funds"
According to the Prosecutor's Office, in 2008 the four defendants "devised a plan that aimed at the arbitrary plundering of public funds" from the Arrecife City Council, so that "at least" José Daniel Hernández would obtain "an illicit patrimonial enrichment".
To achieve this, they "created the appearance that certain lighting and other electricity services were going to be provided at different festivals in the city of Arrecife, knowing that the aforementioned services were never going to be executed." Thus, despite the fact that direct awarding was not legally possible, since the payments exceeded the limit of 18,000 euros, and "without processing any administrative contracting file legally required", this businessman was paid ten invoices of more than 20,000 euros each.
As a concept of these invoices, alleged works of "dismantling of lines, poles, projectors, frames and accessories" appeared in different festivals of the city, despite the fact that in most cases these tasks were carried out by workers of the City Council itself. In some of the invoices, even, the name of the same festivals (and on the same dates) of a capital neighborhood is repeated.
To consummate the "fraud" to the administration, according to the Prosecutor's Office, the businessman presented invoices to the municipal Intervention "knowing that they did not obey any contract and that the services described had not been carried out at any time." Then, "and despite knowing its mendacity", Rafael Arrocha gave the go-ahead to the invoices "as the fictitious person in charge of the contract" and José Miguel Rodríguez also gave his conformity as councilor of the area that assumed the expense.
Finally, Carlos Sáenz, "failing to comply with his supervisory obligations and knowing that the current legislation was being grossly infringed", "arbitrarily authorized the expense" and "recognized the obligation to pay", giving him and Rodríguez himself the green light to the payments.
After the arrests, Festivities stopped the payment of four more invoices
To the ten invoices that the City Council paid, we must add another four, for an amount of almost 100,000 euros more, which were not paid. All of them had already received the approval of Arrocha, Carlos Sáenz and José Miguel Rodríguez, but "the accused did not manage to achieve their purpose for reasons beyond their control, as these illegalities were detected by the Department of Festivities and the material payment of these invoices was suspended by virtue of the agreement adopted by the Local Government Board on July 22, 2009".
At that time, Operation Unión had already exploded, the PSOE had kicked the PIL out of the government group and had been left in a minority and governing alone. After detecting irregularities in these invoices, it stopped the payment and also took the matter to the Courts, giving rise to this new piece of the Unión case, number 13.
With this investigation, which began in July 2009, the name of Carlos Sáenz was put on the table for the first time, who until that moment was not among those charged in the "Unión" case (both Rafael Arrocha and José Miguel Rodríguez had already been arrested a few months before within the framework of this case and are charged in other pieces of "Unión" pending trial).
Afterwards, the name of Sáenz reappeared, but already in the "Montecarlo" case, in which he was arrested and is charged with embezzlement of funds and other crimes, both for events that occurred in Arrecife and in the City Council of San Bartolomé and in that of La Oliva, in which he was also an auditor. In addition, Carlos Sáenz recently became also charged in another piece of Unión, number 12, which investigates allegedly fraudulent payments from the Arrecife Consistory to several more companies, and which is still in the investigation phase.
Currently, the Unión case already has three pieces ready to go to trial and with a formal indictment from the Prosecutor's Office. The first was that of the attempted bribery of the businessman Luis Lleó, in which six years in prison are requested for him and one and a half years for Fernando Becerra; and the second that of Rodríguez Batllori, who collected allegedly fraudulent invoices from both Arrecife and Inalsa, supposedly by order of Dimas Martín. Along with Batllori, in that piece are accused Dimas himself, the former councilors of Arrecife José Miguel Rodríguez and Luisa Blanco; the former CEO of Inalsa, Plácida Guerra; and the former manager of that same company, Rafael Elorrieta.
