Santa Cruz de Tenerife (EFE) Mediator, he received messages from him whose purpose, he said, was to hold “political meetings” with him.
“His obsession was to see how to contact or have a relationship with me. Luckily I kept my distance”, Martín proclaimed during an extraordinary plenary session of the island corporation to analyze the repercussions of the Mediator case on the institution and which was attended by Navarro Tacoronte among the public.
The president of the Cabildo has recounted that it was Navarro who went to his office to advise him against keeping Ángel Luis Pérez Peña as director of Sports, who had denounced him for a crime of fraud.
He indicated that at that time he was unaware of “the relationship” between the two, that from what is becoming known about the case “it can be seen that things were not going well”, and he added that “if someone comes to tell me that my director is committing some irregularity I hear it.”
Just as if he sends “a message”, he is “in the know” in case he could provide him with any information that would allow him to investigate and discover said irregularities, Pedro Martín has wielded.
But that was not the case, because “the messages and calls” from Navarro were because “he wanted to have political meetings with me. I have no reason to have any political meeting of any kind with that man, ”he asserted.
The president of the Cabildo, who in a moment of the plenary session has ordered the mediator to shut up or else he would order his eviction from the room, warning him that “this is not a circus”, has also denied another of the “inventions” of this.
Specifically, that he intended to “bust” the Los Realejos City Council and its mayor at the time, Manuel Domínguez, current leader of the Canarian PP. “What nonsense!”, he has proclaimed himself.
Pedro Martín has indicated that what the mediator was trying to do with his “tour” through different town halls was “to win the will of the corporations or the councillors”, and he stressed that in this case “the question is who one believes”.
As far as he is concerned, he has said that he believes in the version given by Manuel Domínguez and also by the mayor of Santiago del Teide and leader of the Tenerife PP, Emilio Navarro.
Martín has defended himself against opposition accusations that he has been varying his speech on the Mediator case, indicating that if anyone has contradicted himself it is Manuel Domínguez regarding whether he knew Navarro Tacoronte.
Something that has been reproached by the PP adviser Zaida González, who has accused the PSOE of disclosing a “false video” about those statements made by the popular leader on two televisions.
González has snapped at Pedro Martín that “as a politician he has lost his shame”, and has added that if he has to “believe in something” regarding the Mediator case “it will be the recordings, which will come out (…) It is all recorded. In court we will see what comes out”.
Pedro Martín has also denied that there was any favorable treatment towards the mediator during his time as mayor of Guía de Isora.
He has admitted that he asked this local corporation today, when he saw an information published in the press about a conversation between the mediator and his lawyer, also investigated in the case, in which they talk about having some detail with a mayor of that town hall.
And what they have explained to him is that Navarro Tacoronte “appeared one day” for the consistory accompanied by a representative of Cajasiete offering sponsorship for some sports teams, which “is what he usually” does in different municipalities, but “it was not reached no contract.”
At the insistence of the PP on when he held that meeting with the mediator in his office in the Cabildo, if before or after the indictment of the former insular director of Sports, Ángel Luis Pérez Peña, for a crime of false denunciation against Navarro, he has indicated that he does not remember “the exact date”.
He has also denied, as the opposition groups pointed out, that it was he who introduced the mediator and the former director of Sports, in the act of presenting a rally of which there are photos in which Navarro appears together with the authorities.
In the same way, he has denied that the Cabildo de Tenerife is “kilometer zero” of the Mediator case, since there is not a single illegal contracting, influence peddling or irregular file of everything analyzed, and if it were detected, he would deliver it “immediately ” To the court.
As the Sports Minister, María Concepción Rivero, did, she assured that the files have been analyzed in case there was any relationship with any of the companies involved in the case and nothing has been found, and she added that in that area there is no bought no vehicle and that at the present mandate there is no current project for the implantation of artificial turf in soccer fields.
He has abounded that the former director of Sports “did not intervene in any contract or subsidy, nor did he bend or change any report”, and he added that “another thing is the particular behavior of this man”, who was “pissed off” with his “friend ”, with whom he lost a lawsuit, and who proposed his resignation, which he accepted, “it would be missing more”.
The fact that Pérez Peña “continues with his personal battles” with the mediator “does not concern me”, has asserted Pedro Martín, who has emphasized that the Cabildo de Tenerife is not being investigated, but if the judge requests it tomorrow, he will remit all the documentation.
What’s more, “if we have the opportunity and the law allows us, we will appear” in the case, he has announced, because “we are not going to allow any case of corruption or for anyone to take advantage of their position for their businesses. The gulfs have to be in jail ”, he has proclaimed.
The counselor of the CC-PNC Group, Verónica Meseguer, has accused the government team of placing the council “at kilometer zero” of the Mediator case and its president of being the most responsible, because he was the one who “handed” the insular director of Sports, as well as introducing him to the mediator.
He has denied that this is “a personal issue” between the former director and the mediator but rather one in which “the council is involved”, and has affirmed that the president was aware of the “goings” of that one, as the president has baptized them. Deputy of Sí Podemos, David Carballo.
In view of the fact that every day that passes the president of the Cabildo “gives a new argument”, he has advanced that his group would support an eventual commission of investigation in the island corporation and would ask that Pedro Martín appear in it.
His groupmate Antolín Bueno has invited the president to make public the content of the messages that the mediator sent him if he “has nothing to hide.”
Zaida González (PP) has drawn attention to the fact that the mediator “walked around his house like Pedro” through various Canarian administrations, including the Cabildo de Tenerife, where he entered “without a concerted meeting”, and more than that, that “an unknown person” had access to the president’s phone to send him messages.
At this point, he has insisted on the “version changes” that Pedro Martín has been giving, who, saying that he did not know the mediator, acknowledged that he met with him and “suddenly he has my phone and sends me things…”.
The vice president of the Cabildo de Tenerife, Enrique Arriaga, from Ciudadanos, recalled that it was the PSOE that proposed Ángel Luis Pérez Peña as director of Sports and that in view of his curriculum “we did not see it badly.”
“Another thing is that in the course of his performance it was detected that he committed irregularities. The case arose after his resignation (…) if he had left before he would not have resigned, he would have been fired ”, he stated.
“Whatever the former director has done or said” this Cabildo has no responsibility,” stressed Arriaga, who stressed that “corrupt are people, not institutions.”
David Carballo, from Sí Podemos, has criticized that “in no case” of corruption or alleged corruption “will a political leader be seen to assume his responsibility”, since “always” there is talk of “isolated cases”, as happened with the Geneto cases , Sinpromi, NAP, casinos, ITER or Ideco.
Carballo has asked if all the members of the plenary session have ever met with the mediator. “I can say no, but I don’t know if everyone in this room can say the same,” he said.
The non-attached counselor María José Belda has agreed with the head of the Sports area that the case is “shameful and frightening”, but has asked not to stay in it, but to go to the last consequences in case of any suspicion of irregularity in the island corporation and in the rest of the institutions. EFE