The Unión case continues to advance and another part of this major judicial case, specifically the one relating to the house of Carlos Morales and Alexia of Greece, already has a trial date. It will be on November 27 when the former mayor of Yaiza, José Francisco Reyes, will be in the dock for a crime of urban planning prevarication and another of administrative prevarication.
Although Morales himself was charged in this case, in the end only the former mayor will answer for the allegedly illegal licenses he granted to the political cousin of the King of Spain. A year and a half ago, the judge who was then investigating the Unión case, María Jesús Hernández Elvira, decided to dismiss the charges against Carlos Morales, understanding that he could have incurred an administrative infraction, but not a crime.
However, she did see indications of a crime in the actions of José Francisco Reyes, who granted licenses to build that house knowing its illegality, therefore incurring in alleged crimes of prevarication. This is also the understanding of the Prosecutor's Office, which is asking for Reyes to be sentenced to two years in prison and 16 years of disqualification from employment or public office.
Reyes already has a conviction for urban planning prevarication behind him and still has to face several trials, including the largest one against him, for the massive granting of illegal licenses in Playa Blanca. That case, dubbed "Yate case", is also pending trial, and in it the Prosecutor's Office is asking for 25 years in prison for José Francisco Reyes, for alleged crimes of bribery (collection of bribes), urban planning prevarication, money laundering, activities and negotiations prohibited to public officials, embezzlement of public funds and document forgery.
Licenses with repeated negative reports
The events that will bring Reyes back to the dock began in July 2005, when Carlos Morales asked the Yaiza Town Hall for a major construction municipal license on a basic project, for the construction of a single-family home on Barranco del Agua street, located between the partial plans of Puerto Calero and Cortijo Viejo.
On December 5, 2006, according to the Prosecutor's Office brief, the then mayor signed a decree granting that license, despite being "fully aware of the illegality of its granting" and even having contrary reports that warned him of it.
In one of them, the then secretary of Yaiza, Vicente Bartolomé Fuentes, (currently removed from his position due to a conviction in another case) warned him that this land was classified as rustic, both in the General Plan that was in force and in the Island Plan. In addition, he stated that the mandatory territorial qualification of the Cabildo had not been requested and that therefore the license could not be granted.
Also a surveyor from the Technical Office had made that warning in another report, also pointing out that "the basic project for the construction of the single-family home was carried out based on regulations that were not in force, since the approval procedure was suspended by the Territorial Planning and Environment Commission of the Canary Islands".
In addition, on December 4, one day before Reyes signed the decree granting the license, the secretary of the Town Hall informed him again that it could not be granted, since the General Plan of Yaiza was not adapted to the current Canarian legislation, "the general planning of 1973 being in force, affected by the direct classification made by the Island Plan".
For all this, the prosecutor concludes that "the accused was perfectly aware and even knowing of his manifest impossibility due to the lack of everything ordered by the urban planning regulations to be able to execute the construction of an isolated single-family home, did not hesitate to violate the urban planning regulations" and grant the license.
A second license against the criteria of the technicians
To that license we must add another granted by Reyes on the execution of the definitive project, despite the fact that he also had negative reports from both the Yaiza Technical Office and the secretary of the Town Hall.
"The same day in which the secretary of the Town Hall warned him in writing in his report that the land was rustic and of the need to obtain the territorial qualification of the Cabildo of Lanzarote, the then Mayor-President of the Yaiza Town Hall contravened what was arranged by his technicians and ignoring the most elementary administrative procedural rules, violating the most basic rules of mandatory observance imposed by the applicable urban planning regulations, dispensing with the essential procedures in the granting of urban planning licenses by not having a prior legal report required" and by "not having an adequate legal study that certified the concordance between the urbanization project and the planning applicable to the license, without having the mandatory and binding report of compatibility with the PIOT to be issued by the Cabildo of Lanzarote, granted without any motivation and departing from what was arranged by the technician of the municipal office the license on the execution project of the urbanization project on the date of March 14, 2006", maintains the qualification brief of the prosecutor Javier Ródenas.
The prosecutor asks for the annulment of the licenses
In addition to the conviction of José Francisco Reyes, the Prosecutor's Office will also demand in the trial the annulment of the two licenses granted by Reyes to build the house of Carlos Morales and Alexia of Greece. However, in this regard it should be remembered that the current General Plan of Yaiza, approved last July by the Cotmac, reclassifies that space as developable land, accommodating this house, which could be legalized.
When this change in the document was known, the drafter of the Plan, Jorge Coderch, defended this decision and assured that it had been "logical" for him to regulate the space in which the Morales house is located. "It is a residual land between two sectors, which responded to an order that understood that the tourist pieces should be separated. But this was only heeded in Puerto Calero, in Playa Blanca it was useless", he defended.
"I try to remove all prejudices regardless of my personal assessments and who is affected. I have never taken into account to solve this problem that this gentleman is very famous and is charged", Coderch said then, when the criminal case against Morales was still ongoing.
Unlike what happens with the crimes of urban planning prevarication committed by public officials, the crimes of individuals against land management require that what is built is not only illegal, but also unlegalizable, which would no longer happen in the case of the Carlos Morales house with the General Plan that has just been approved.
