The former secretary of the Island Directorate of the General State Administration in Lanzarote, Fernando Rodríguez López-Lannes, faced a trial this Wednesday in the Criminal Court number 1 of Arrecife, for an alleged crime of administrative prevarication. The prosecutor is asking for nine years of special disqualification from employment or public office, in addition to the penalty requested by the private prosecution.
Fernando Rodríguez was removed from his position in March 2006, thus leaving the position of secretary of the Island Directorate, which he had held since 1999. According to a statement issued at the time by the Government Delegation in the Canary Islands, his dismissal occurred after verifying an "unjustified administrative deterioration in the management of the General Secretariat, together with a "loss of confidence".
As Fernando Rodríguez himself confirmed at the time, a police officer filed a lawsuit against him in court for an alleged crime of prevarication, due to the alleged delay in the Secretariat of files related to private security services. The dismissed secretary admitted this fact at the time, but attributed it exclusively to the "lack of personnel" in his section, about which he said he had warned on repeated occasions. "I have not committed any prevarication," he told La Voz at the time.
Representatives of neighborhood associations supported the then secretary of the Government Delegation in Lanzarote at that time, in a press conference in which Fernando Rodríguez himself appeared to talk about his dismissal.
