The now former municipal secretary of the Arrecife City Council, Asenet Padrón, not only reported to the Local Police the alleged theft of documents from the Consistory after verifying that one of the cabinets in her office had been forced between December 30 and January 2. Previously, Padrón had already reported the disappearance of part of a file, which appeared at the home of the mayor of Arrecife.
The file in question had been requested by the Prosecutor's Office, within the investigation it has opened for alleged irregularities in contracts and invoices of the Arrecife City Council between 2008 and 2011. After receiving the request, and when the secretary had already made the certified copy of the documents and sent them to the prosecutor, the mayor, Cándido Reguera, as well as the deputy mayor, José Montelongo, and the councilor for Human Resources, Nayra Callero, went to the Secretary's office to request that file.
Reguera has tried to downplay this matter, assuring that it was only "a misunderstanding". "It is an internal matter, which is already resolved," he has limited himself to saying. Apparently, the three public officials went to the municipal secretary's office accompanied by a lawyer, according to the mayor himself. Asenet Padrón was not in her office at that time.
Reguera, Montelongo and Callero requested the file, which had already been requested by the Prosecutor's Office, to photocopy it. After that, they returned the documentation to the person who was in the office, who was another official. However, when Asenet Padrón returned to her office, she realized that several pages of the file were missing.
It was at this moment that, according to the mayor, "the error" occurred. "We went to photocopy a document and we mistakenly took the copies", Reguera has pointed out, who took part of this file to his house. "Then, when they realized, we resolved the issue and the documents were replaced in the City Council", the mayor has indicated, who has trusted that this situation "will return to its course".
The opposition asks for explanations
However, the statements of the government group do not convince the opposition, which is going to ask Reguera for explanations on this matter. According to the spokesperson for the PIL in the Arrecife City Council, Juan Jesús Docal, Reguera has gathered them this Tuesday morning to explain why several pages of a file appeared in his home, as reported by the secretary. "He has told us that an original was misplaced when copies were being made. That paper ended up in the mayor's house and was later recovered. I don't know, time will tell us what is happening", Docal has distrusted, while saying that "he wants to know what is happening with this thorny issue".
Who also does not understand this circumstance is Domingo García, from Alternativa Ciudadana. "It is a matter of time. It is true that the complaint has been made by the secretary to the political officials of the City Council and it is true that she has been dismissed", he has indicated to try to explain how "strange" this matter is. "The mayor says that he has dismissed the secretary for the better functioning of the institution, but with all due respect, we do not believe it. We believe it is something deeper and more serious", he has pointed out.
Alternativa Ciudadana has called a meeting on Tuesday night in which it will analyze "certain documents". According to Domingo García, among these "documents" could be the files that the secretary provided to the Prosecutor's Office, after the request made by the Public Ministry. "We want to know the possible accusations that the secretary may have seen in her work", he has affirmed.
"Administratively improve the institution"
Precisely about the dismissal of Asenet Padrón, Reguera has defended that it is due exclusively to an attempt to "administratively improve the institution and other municipal services". The mayor has explained that Asenet Padrón was proposed by the former mayor María Isabel Déniz as acting secretary.
For a time, the secretary was "on leave" and was replaced by another person, who is currently working "on a commission of services" as secretary in the Teguise City Council, but that Reguera intends to "recover". "In addition, this person was proposed by Asenet herself", the mayor has pointed out.
Asenet Padrón will be relocated to the legal department, according to the mayor. Reguera has again justified this measure and has pointed out that "the government group may have some errors like all humans, but it only intends to improve the functioning of the institution as much as possible", he indicated this Tuesday on Radio Lanzarote.
In addition, he wanted to insist that the dismissal of the secretary "has nothing to do" with the investigation opened by the Prosecutor's Office. "I don't know who could have thought that one thing has to do with the other. You can speculate but I tell you that it has nothing to do with it", he has pointed out.
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