The trial for the illegal licenses that the former mayor of Yaiza, José Francisco Reyes, granted to his party colleague, Pedro de Armas, will have to wait until April. The hearing was scheduled to take place this Thursday, but it has finally been suspended at the request of the Prosecutor's Office. When raising the preliminary issues in the trial, the prosecutor warned that he had not been given access to the defense briefs or the documentation provided by one of the defendants, the former secretary Vicente Bartolomé Fuentes, when the investigation of the case had already concluded.
Among that documentation is an expert report by Ignacio Díaz de Aguilar, which the prosecutor believes should be analyzed before the trial is held, "for the purposes of its possible challenge." In this regard, he pointed out that this expert proposed by the defense "lacks the requirements of objectivity and impartiality" because "he was the main interested party" in the development of the Playa Blanca Partial Plan, which is where the licenses were granted to De Armas.
The same was pointed out by the lawyer for the private prosecution, represented by Urban Transparency, who recalled the "important role" of Ignacio Díaz de Aguilar in that Partial Plan, since among other things he was an advisor to the Compensation Board and is the brother of one of the main promoters. In addition, the lawyer has provided several judgments that have ruled in favor of home buyers in that partial plan, who filed civil lawsuits against the promoters, after discovering that the houses they had acquired were illegal. According to the lawyer, these judgments "conveniently illustrate" the "direct interest" that the expert proposed by the defense has in that partial plan. "He harangued the promoters to build quickly," the lawyer said, referring to Ignacio Díaz de Aguilar and what is said about him in those judgments.
New date for April 7
Both the private prosecution and the lawyers of the three defendants in this case have agreed to suspend the trial, after the Public Prosecutor's Office stated that it could cause them defenselessness the fact of not having had access to the "significant amount of documentation" provided by the defense of Vicente Bartolomé Fuentes before the trial.
Thus, the judge has already set a new date to hold the hearing, which will take place on April 7. Before the session was officially adjourned, the prosecutor asked that the defenses also raise their preliminary issues and, specifically, that they clarify whether they planned to provide any new document this Thursday. What he intended was for them to hand it over now, so that "the same thing does not happen again" when the next date established to hold this hearing arrives.
Along with Reyes, the former secretary of Yaiza, Vicente Bartolomé Fuentes, and the head of the Technical Office, Antonio Lorenzo, are in the dock. Prosecutor Ignacio Stampa is asking for two years in prison and 10 years of disqualification for each of the three defendants, for a continued crime of urban prevarication.
Two licenses for 66 villas
The events that have brought Reyes back to the dock occurred in 2005, when Reyes authorized the construction of 66 villas in the Playa Blanca Partial Plan, with two different licenses. In one of the cases, the license was granted directly to Pedro De Armas' company, Marivista Lanzarote SL. In the other, the license was granted to Villas Blancas Lanzarote SL, just after that plot passed through the hands of José Francisco Reyes' party colleague. In fact, De Armas bought and sold that plot on the same day.
According to the Prosecutor's Office, the former mayor granted the permits despite being aware of their illegality. In addition, he maintains that Reyes "decided to continue with the development of the Playa Blanca Partial Plan, ignoring the warnings of illegality from the Cabildo and the Canary Islands Government itself, which a year earlier had appealed the approval of the statutes and bases of action of the Compensation Board." In fact, when Reyes granted the licenses to De Armas, the Cabildo had already appealed even the urbanization project of the Partial Plan in the courts. As for the secretary and the head of the Technical Office, the prosecutor considers that they issued reports "with the intention of giving an appearance of legal correctness to the entire administrative procedure" and "deliberately" giving José Francisco Reyes the "coverage to justify the granting" of the licenses.
Both Bartolomé Fuentes and Reyes already have other convictions behind them for similar crimes. In the case of Reyes, he has just completed his first prison sentence, in this case for granting an illegal license to Alexia of Greece's husband, Carlos Morales. After acknowledging that he prevaricated when granting that permit and accepting the Prosecutor's qualification brief, Reyes was sentenced to six months in prison and entered the Tahíche penitentiary center on June 18. He has now finished serving that sentence, although he still has a long list of pending trials. In addition to this one that has been postponed to April, he still has to face the two largest ones: the Yate case and the Stratvs case.