"Urbaser paid an illegal commission of between 25 and 50 million pesetas (between 150,000 and 300,000 euros) for the award of the cleaning contract with the Arrecife City Council (in the year 2002). I know this for a fact, with total certainty, because Dimas told me. He told me that the commission was 50 million pesetas and that he was going to split it in half with Isabel Déniz (then mayor of Arrecife and secretary of the Party of Independents of Lanzarote)".
This is one of the excerpts from the last statement to the judge in the "Unión" case by Dimas Martín's right-hand man, Matías Curbelo. He made it in July 2009, and it is within the part on which the summary secrecy has just been lifted. In this part of his statement, Curbelo confessed that he himself collected part of that payment, from the hand of the manager of Urbaser in Lanzarote, Jacinto Álvarez.
"Dimas ordered me to go and collect the envelope with the second payment," Matías Curbelo told the judge, adding that it was then that the PIL leader told him the total amount of the commission that the company paid, and who was going to keep that money. According to Curbelo, he knows that the former mayor was aware of that illegal commission "because she profited" from it.
Always according to the account of Matías Curbelo, Urbaser would have made the payment in at least two parts. The first, "of about 25 million pesetas" (150,000 euros) was directly "with Dimas or María Isabel". In the second, Curbelo himself was in charge of collecting the money. And the delivery was made on the street, in the area "behind the Cabildo". There, he assures that Jacinto Álvarez handed him an envelope "in which there would be at least 10 million pesetas and at most 12 million, possibly about 12 million." According to Curbelo, the manager of Urbaser in Lanzarote brought that money "from Madrid". In Operation "Jable", several national executives of the company were arrested, and are currently free on charges.
Delivery to Miguel Ángel Leal
In that same street where he received the envelope, Matías Curbelo assures that he in turn gave it to Miguel Ángel Leal, then councilor of the Cabildo for the ranks of the PSOE, as well as husband of the then deputy mayor of Arrecife, Nuria Cabrera. "It may be that the money was distributed between the PIL and the PSOE", Curbelo pointed out to explain Leal's role in this operation, which was carried out in 2002, ten years ago now.
Miguel Ángel Leal Leal was also "very linked", according to Curbelo, with the head of the Technical Office of Arrecife, Rafael Arrocha. Arrocha was responsible, among other things, for the periodic review of the prices charged by Urbaser to the City Council. And it is that in addition to the mayor, more people were also needed to give the green light to that contract and subsequent payments to Urbaser.
Both Miguel Ángel Leal and Rafael Arrocha were arrested in Operation "Jable". In addition, Arrocha had also been arrested in the first phase of Operation "Unión", for other alleged crimes committed from the City Council.
Another of those arrested in the framework of the "Unión" case, the former Finance Councilor of Arrecife, José Miguel Rodríguez (PIL), who later arrived at the City Council and also confessed to having received bribes in the 2007-2011 legislature, was asked in the Courts about Urbaser. And in his opinion, the contract with that company was "disproportionate".
20,000 euros for cleaning the fairground site
"There is a monthly expense of 700,000 euros in garbage collection, garden and road cleaning services, which is among the highest in Spain, and precisely Arrecife is not a city that can boast cleanliness", Rodríguez stated in the Courts.
In addition, as Finance Councilor, he explained that until the new government group entered in 2007, when Isabel Déniz lost the Mayor's Office in the polls, "Urbaser issued extraordinary invoices for services, different from what was agreed in the contract, such as at the San Ginés festivities and the Three Kings Parade". According to Rodríguez, Urbaser charged the City Council up to "20,000 euros for cleaning the space used by the fairground caravans at this type of festivities".
In the 2007-2011 legislature, Dimas Martín requested from his councilors in the Arrecife City Council the specifications with the conditions of the contract between Urbaser and the Consistory. And according to José Miguel Rodríguez, the reason was clear: in 2013 the contract was going to be renewed for ten years, and "Dimas could be agreeing on the demands of the commission".
The relationship between Dimas and Isabel "was good"
Thus, according to José Miguel Rodríguez, the PIL leader could have tried to continue a "relationship" that began in 2002, under the Mayor's Office of María Isabel Déniz, when the contract with Urbaser was renewed. According to Matías Curbelo, in Déniz's time, "Urbaser depended directly on the Mayor's Office". And also at that time, "the relations between Isabel Déniz and Dimas were good".
According to Matías Curbelo, "he was only used to collect", but "the agreements were made by them, with the corresponding company". Of course, he also clarified that the contracting had to go through "the Technical Office or Contracting", and that "Parks and Gardens must also be involved, or at least have knowledge".
In addition to the alleged illegal commission for the award of the contract, Urbaser had also allegedly paid other sums in subsequent years, often in the form of "gifts". This was reflected in the notebooks found in a kind of "clandestine" warehouse that was registered by the UCO, in which Jacinto Álvarez noted the gifts that he allegedly made for years to María Isabel Déniz and other public officials and civil servants, including trips, bags and luxury watches.
In addition to an excessively advantageous contract for the company signed in 2002, five years later "a price revision" was also approved, endorsed by Rafael Arrocha as head of the Technical Office, which further increased the bill charged by Urbaser.
Five Urbaser executives arrested
Within Operation "Jable", framed in the same "Unión" case, up to five Urbaser executives were arrested. The first was the manager in Lanzarote, Jacinto Álvarez, as well as an executive from Madrid, Stephani Jean Valverde. In a second phase, Manuel Andrés Martínez and Santiago Alonso were arrested, who were released on charges, charged with alleged crimes of bribery and alteration of competitions. The last detainee was the director of Works and Exploitation of Urbaser, Francisco José Martínez.
After his arrest, Jacinto Álvarez confessed some of the facts that he is accused of and, supposedly, would have implicated his hierarchical superiors in the company, claiming that he was complying with orders. In fact, when Manuel Andrés Martínez and Santiago Alonso were arrested, the judge subjected them to a confrontation with the former manager. Jacinto Álvarez spent almost a month and a half in provisional prison after his arrest and, shortly after being released on charges, he was fired from the company.