The secretary of the Yaiza Town Hall, Vicente Bartolomé, testified this Friday for more than two hours in the Court of First Instance and Instruction number 2 of Arrecife, after being charged, along with José Francisco Reyes, in the case opened for alleged crimes of prevarication, influence peddling, bribery and money laundering in the massive granting of illegal licenses in the southern municipality.
The investigation by the Udyco and the court itself that is investigating the case have led to the indictment of Vicente Bartolomé, who for more than two hours had to answer questions from the Public Prosecutor's Office about his participation in the granting of these licenses that were later annulled by the Courts.
This is not the first time that the secretary of the Yaiza Town Hall has had to testify before the Justice, since he is also charged, together with the former mayor and the head of the Municipal Technical Office, with a crime of urban planning prevarication in the granting of the license for the thousand homes in Playa Blanca.
The case is expanded
Already at the time, and after the statement of José Francisco Reyes in this process, the lawyer of the private prosecution, Irma Ferrer, announced that this statement was "nothing more than the beginning" and that others would occur, since she assured that Reyes had pointed "to specific people within the City Council as responsible for granting this type of licenses that have been given against the Law".
It should be remembered that, within the framework of this case, the Justice also took a further step with respect to the former mayor of Yaiza, ordering the Special Police Unit for the fight against organized crime to investigate the patrimonial movements of the mayor's environment, in an attempt to clarify the reasons that led Reyes to grant more than 30 building licenses and extensions of other expired licenses between 1998 and 2003, which are now under suspicion of corruption.
