José Francisco Reyes and the people who intervened in the granting of illegal licenses in the Playa Blanca Partial Plan could face a new criminal proceeding. At least that is what the Prosecutor's Office has requested, in the same document in which it formulates the final accusation against twelve people in the "Yate" case.
That case began as a result of the hotel licenses granted by the former mayor of Yaiza in Playa Blanca, but the investigation was expanded and reached other illegal permits granted by Reyes. Among them, the urbanization project of the Playa Blanca Partial Plan, for whose approval the former mayor, the secretary of the City Council, Vicente Bartolomé Fuentes, and the head of the Technical Office, Antonio Lorenzo, are charged.
In addition to the initial project to develop that Partial Plan, which in reality was extinguished and could not be authorized, dozens of licenses were subsequently authorized for the construction of some 600 homes, which have not even been analyzed in detail within the "Yate" case.
Therefore, given the volume that this investigation has reached, with a final indictment of almost 150 pages, the Prosecutor's Office has decided to separate the actions that had been carried out up to now with respect to those licenses, granted between 2004 and 2007, and open a new proceeding and a specific investigation for those facts.
Thus, and although the alleged crimes of urban planning prevarication for the granting of the first permit for that Partial Plan (that of the urbanization project) will be judged within the "Yate" case, the rest of the licenses could give rise to a new accusation. And with it, new penalties could be requested for Reyes (for whom the Prosecutor's Office is asking for 25 years in prison only for the "Yate" case) and also for the municipal technicians who favorably reported those licenses.
For one of those permits, specifically the one that Reyes granted to his party colleague, Pedro de Armas, there is already a criminal proceeding open in another court, specifically in the Court of First Instance Number 5. In that case, which began as a result of a complaint, José Francisco Reyes, the secretary of the City Council, Vicente Bartolomé Fuentes, and the head of the Technical Office, Antonio Lorenzo, are charged for the licenses they granted to Pedro de Armas to build homes in a partial plan that did not really exist.
Like this case, there are dozens more permits that were granted to different developers within that Partial Plan, and now the Prosecutor's Office proposes to investigate them all together in a new case. In the indictment of the "Yate" case, up to 24 licenses are cited granted to different companies in the Playa Blanca Partial Plan, among which are those of Agueri, represented by Federico Díaz de Aguilar, and those of several Basque developers, such as José Ramón Olaberría.
Alleged scams
In addition to the new criminal proceeding that could be opened now, the Playa Blanca Partial Plan already has a long history in the courts. On the one hand, with the contentious-administrative processes that declared the licenses illegal. On the other hand, with the judicial battles that dozens of buyers of those homes have had to undertake, who were unaware of their situation when they acquired them.
Many of them had to take the developers to court to get them to return the deposit they had paid when buying the homes, which were declared illegal before they received them. Others also decided to go to the criminal route, feeling that they had been victims of a scam. And they argue that the developers knew the situation of the partial plan when they were selling the houses, and they hid it from the buyers.
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[The Prosecutor's Office asks for 25 years in prison for Reyes and 5 for his wife and children, and demands that they pay a fine of almost 9 million euros->75722]
