Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (EFE) that they did not involve the “plunder” described by the Prosecutor’s Office, but were covered by a plenary agreement and responded to real services.
In this procedure, the Canary Islands Prosecutor’s Office maintained that the lawyer Fernández Camero had “arranged” with the mayor of Yaiza at the time, José Francisco Reyes, already convicted in several cases for corruption, and with the municipal auditors Vicente Bartolomé and Antonio Fernández to “plunder” the coffers of this Lanzarote town hall, through monthly payments that were presented as payments for legal advice.
The Public Ministry maintained during the trial, held in June, that these payments lasted for more than a decade (from 1996 to 2012), that they were made without processing any contracting file and that they responded to the “mere whim and desire for money” of the lawyer Fernández Camero, for whom he requested six years in jail.
In a sentence made public this Tuesday, the first section of the Hearing responds to the Prosecutor’s Office that there was no prevarication, nor was the embezzlement of public funds committed, nor can the defendants be charged with a crime of documentary falsification.
As the defense maintained during the trial, the court declares it proven that there was an agreement of the plenary session of the Yaiza City Council on August 9, 1980, by which it was agreed to hire the services as lawyer of Fernández Camero, who worked for the Consistory in “a regime equally”; that is to say, receiving a fixed remuneration, regardless of how many proceedings he legally advised or defended the Consistory.
And that agreement, the magistrates add, “legitimized the actions of the mayor José Francisco Reyes and the auditor Vicente Bartolomé” by continuing to resort to the legal services of that lawyer, “excluding the arbitrariness in his actions.”
The Court does not appreciate any evidence that would allow it to be determined that the mayor and the auditors prevaricated by hiring the legal services of the lawyer Fernández Camero and, furthermore, it considers that it has been proven in the trial that there was not “a concert or agreement of wills between the four defendants tending to plunder public funds” of the Yaiza City Council.
For the magistrates, it is relevant that the services for which Fernández Camero charged were actually provided and that his fees were not “disproportionate or excessive.”
And this leads them to also rule out the crime of embezzlement, because, as they explain in the sentence, “there is no evidence of the existence of damage or possible harm to municipal interests, whose claims, on the other hand, in many proceedings were resolved favorably” with the intervention of Fernández Camero.
Regarding the thesis of the Prosecutor’s Office that this lawyer had “arranged” with Mayor Reyes to “plunder” the City Council, the Court reminds the public prosecution that the mayors who succeeded the defendant continued to count on him.
“The maintenance of legal advisory services by the mayor Glady Acuña Machín, who succeeded the defendant Francisco Reyes as mayor, constitutes an objective fact that allows us to exclude that concert of wills on the part of the four defendants, since that did not seems suspected of being in collusion with Mr. Reyes, given that he took office after a motion of no confidence filed against José Francico Reyes was successful”, remarks the rapporteur magistrate, Inocencia Eugenia Cabello.
And, regarding the possible falsehood, the court rejects these charges with arguments such as this: “Both the bills of fees for legal advice and for the defense of the Yaiza City Council in a legal arbitration procedure, in numerous administrative appeals and in various civil procedures respond to professional services actually provided and bring cause of a lawful legal relationship. EFE
