The Sixth Section of the Provincial Court of Las Palmas has dismissed the appeal filed by the well-known construction businessman and rally driver from Lanzarote, Oliver Rodríguez Santos, against the Judgment of the Criminal Court No. 3 of Lanzarote, which on October 2, 2007, had sentenced him to two years and six months in prison, special disqualification, and a fine of 35,000 euros for a continued crime of falsifying official documents.
The Judgment that the Provincial Court issued on June 30, 2008, considers it fully proven that Oliver Rodríguez falsified several building permits from the Arrecife City Council during 2004 related to several works that he was carrying out in said municipality "in order to incorporate them into public deeds of exchange and horizontal division for their access to the Land Registry".
The Chamber adds in the grounds of its Judgment that "the licenses are unequivocally false" and "were used by the accused, knowing their falsity, as if they were authentic originals, presenting them at the Notary's office", which meant that "the falsity created an appearance capable of misleading economic agents".
The Judgment of the Provincial Court makes the conviction against Oliver Rodríguez final after the complaint filed against him by the Arrecife City Council itself when it detected the existence of the falsified licenses and which has also exercised the private prosecution throughout the procedure.
Oliver Rodríguez has been in pre-trial detention for more than two months for his alleged involvement in an extortion plot that had hired a German hitman to blackmail various professionals from Lanzarote and Tenerife with the intention of obtaining money from them through violent methods.
As will be recalled, Rodríguez Santos would have hired the services of a German hitman, with the alleged knowledge or complicity of other businessmen on the island who are also charged with these same events, to extort a lawyer from Lanzarote and an Architect from Tenerife.
The well-known businessman from Lanzarote also has another trial pending for similar events (currently awaiting judgment) and currently at least seven other criminal cases are being pursued against him in the Arrecife Courts for the alleged commission of falsehoods, asset stripping, fraud, and other crimes.