The trial for the illegal licenses that the former mayor of Yaiza, José Francisco Reyes, granted to his party colleague, Pedro de Armas, has been suspended for the second time this Thursday. This time, the reason has been the death of Reyes' father-in-law, who passed away on Tuesday night and will be buried this Thursday.
Given this situation, the defense of the former mayor has requested a postponement of the trial, for which a new date will now have to be found. This suspension adds to the one that already occurred on December 17, which was the date initially scheduled to hold this hearing. Then it was the Prosecutor's Office that requested the suspension, since it had not been given the "significant amount of documentation" provided before the trial by one of the accused, the former secretary Vicente Bartolomé Fuentes.
Both the private prosecution and the lawyers of the three defendants agreed to suspend the trial. Thus, the judge had to find a new date for almost 4 months later, that is, this April 7, but finally the hearing could not be held either, although for very different reasons.
Along with Reyes, the former secretary of Yaiza, Vicente Bartolomé Fuentes, and the head of the Technical Office, Antonio Lorenzo, must sit on the bench in this trial. The 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 will be judged in this case 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 Government of the Canary Islands 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. Regarding the secretary and the head of the Technical Office, the prosecutor considers that they issued reports "with the intention of giving the appearance of legal correctness to the entire administrative procedure" and giving "premeditatedly" 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 by granting that permit and accepting the Prosecutor's Office's indictment, 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 again, he still has to face the two largest: the Yate case and the Stratvs case.
The defense provides Ignacio Díaz de Aguilar as an expert
Among the documentation provided for the trial by the defense of Bartolomé Fuentes, there is an expert report by Ignacio Díaz de Aguilar. In this regard, already in the first hearing that was finally suspended, the prosecutor 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 of 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 provided several judgments that have sided with buyers of homes 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 pointed out, referring to Ignacio Díaz de Aguilar and what is said about him in those judgments.