Alfredo Gómez, councilor in the City Council of La Laguna, has decided to withdraw from Ciudadanos, a party he has accused of putting “obstacles” in his “active fight” against corruption. Of course, he does not renounce the act of councilor.
The councilor for Transparency of La Laguna who heads the complaint against the government group charges 37,600 euros and has met his commission once
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In a letter made public on his official Twitter account, Alfredo Gómez points out that the problems with the party arose as a result of the fact that, as president of the Transparency, Good Governance and Public Information Commission, he observed “numerous legal anomalies” that he has denounced in the so-called Layca case. This commission only met once, when it was constituted, but for the position in it Gómez charged the figure of 37,641.03 euros, according to the City Council itself.
Last July, the mayor of La Laguna, Luis Yeray Gutiérrez, removed Gómez from the position of president of said commission. He did it after the councilor lent himself to lead, backed by the opposition of the Canary Coalition and PP, a complaint against the progressive government group (PSOE, Avante and Unidas Sí Se Podemos) for alleged irregularities in public contracts.
However, Gómez, who supposedly called a press conference to detail the reason for the complaint, did not clearly explain what the alleged criminal acts were. What he did do was take advantage of the presence of the media to invite anyone who wanted to know the case to follow his channel on YouTube, where, according to him, he would be publishing his “secret investigations” in a fascinating way.
A complaint based on “testimonies from some sources”
Alfredo Gómez filed a complaint with the Laguna courts against the mayor, the Councilor for Culture, Yaiza López; the councilor for the Treasury, Alejandro Marrero; the Councilor for Festivities, Carla Cabrera; and Badel Albelo, Culture coordinator, for “anomalies in public contracts that compromise nearly one million euros from public coffers.” The still president of the Transparency Commission blamed the government team for “prioritizing family and friendship interests over the general interest,” based on alleged extra costs identified in contracts granted to a company to acquire masks, water bottles or instruments to take the temperature, in the midst of the health crisis due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The alleged criminal act would be, according to the deductions that Gómez made from “the testimonies of some sources”, “reduce the cost of the reforms that Luis Yeray Gutiérrez made in his house and for which he hired this same company.”
However, the Councilor for Urbanism, Santiago Pérez, pointed out at that time that Gómez had not requested any official documentation from the City Council as president of the Transparency Commission and that he had obtained “invented data on the black market.” Pérez also pointed out, that the mayor of Ciudadanos was used by CC, taking advantage of his position, to formalize and give credit to a previous complaint made by Javier Abreu.
Gómez also included in his complaint the president of the Parliament of the Canary Islands, Gustavo Matos, whom he accused of having hired “on numerous occasions the catering service”, which had installed a pergola in his private home. He even stated that people around him had received threats from the President of Parliament. Gustavo Matos replied that same day and defended that the statement was “radically false and represents an absolute disregard for the truth.” In addition, he reported that the Citizen Councilor had not contacted him to verify the information and that he did try to locate him to put his disposition of all the documentation and, in addition, “to warn you of the falsity of the aforementioned statements.” In the absence of answers, Matos filed a complaint against Gómez for an alleged crime of slander and insults.
Now Gómez relates that, as a result of his complaint, the Secretary of Institutional Action of Cs in the Canary Islands, Ruymán Santana, indicated that they did not want him to appear in the investigation commission that was created in the City Council because “they do not want much to be done noise”.
According to the mayor, “this sinister intervention can only be interpreted as one more of the many actions aimed at protecting the PSOE from the Citizens in the Canary Islands party,” and for all the details and other issues he requests the immediate withdrawal of the party.
Alfredo Gómez’s YouTube channel, where according to him he was going to reveal an alleged case of corruption, has barely garnered 190 subscribers.
