Eight hundred thousand euros. That is the amount that, according to investigators, Pedro de Armas earned after spending a morning in a notary's office.
The value attributed to the assets accumulated by José Francisco Reyes with an alleged illicit origin is, purely by chance, also eight hundred thousand euros.
The same amount and two very different realities, according to the investigations:
Pedro de Armas, the real mastermind, the man with the contacts, earns eight hundred thousand euros with two signatures in one morning.
José Francisco Reyes, the useful fool, the middleman, has to work hard signing illegal licenses to get the same amount. As an example: the illegal license with which Pedro de Armas earned those famous eight hundred thousand euros was also signed by José Francisco Reyes.
It's not that rare. In the world of drugs, there is no comparison between what the boss accumulates and the crumbs left for the dealer.
From what it seems, according to what has been published about the investigations, the same thing happened with the illegal licensing scheme: the contact boss earns in one sitting everything that the license dealer earned over the years he signed everything that was put in front of him.
They are not only distinguished by what each one has earned, which is already quite a lot. The difference extends to the different procedural luck they have suffered.
Pedro de Armas, the man at the top, is subject to an investigation that could greatly complicate his immediate future. José Francisco Reyes has had to suffer seeing his wife and children arrested and has himself served a long period of pre-trial detention.
Pedro de Armas, who was suspected because he was always around, continues to freely dispose of his assets. José Francisco Reyes has seen how they seized even the van with which he supposedly amassed his fortune selling cheeses and potatoes in Fuerteventura.
In this story, in addition to the eight hundred thousand euros, there is a sucker whose silence can only be explained either by the promise of a settlement in the future, or by the fear of what might happen to him in the present. Perhaps both, to complete the resemblance to the mafia.
Carlos Espino, former secretary of the PSOE Lanzarote
