The secretary of the Santa Cruz de Tenerife City Council, Luis Prieto, is also being investigated in the so-called Emmasa case, which tries to clarify the misappropriation of 59 million euros by the multinational Sacyr to take over the water business in La town. The group United We Can (UP), as a private accusation, has been informed that Luis Prieto is being investigated for alleged administrative prevarication and embezzlement after the statement as a witness by former councilor Norberto Plasencia.
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The UP spokesman in the municipal corporation explained this Thursday that Luis Prieto, as general secretary of the plenary session, was part of the Emmasa board of directors in which in 2007 the repayment of a debt “that did not exist” was ordered, according to the Plasencia’s statement in the case.
The multinational Sacyr-Vallehermoso kept the integral water cycle from Santa Cruz de Tenerife in 2005, while Coalición Canaria was in power. The company offered a fee of 59 million euros (10 million more than what was required in plenary session) to keep the infrastructure. This money was later recovered illegally through different payments returned by the City Council. With this strategy, in 2007 Sacyr had already recovered 28.2 million euros, almost half of what it invested.
The plot is in court. However, the mayor, José Manuel Bermúdez, prevented through his casting vote the City Council from taking criminal action in the case, ignoring even the legal services of the corporation. On May 28, the plenary voted on the possibility that the government group, made up of the Canarian Coalition, the PP and the defected councilor Evelyn Alonso, could prosecute the case. The result was a tie at 13 and Bermúdez exercised his casting vote to prevent the initiative.
The main investigated in this case are Miguel Zerolo, former mayor of the capital, and Pablo Abril Martorell, former CEO of Emmasa (Empresa Mixta de Aguas de Santa Cruz de Tenerife). The crimes attributed to them are prevarication and embezzlement of public funds for privatizing the water service in the city. Sacyr argued, as published Canary Islands Now, that the fee paid was a “loan” to Emmasa for the use of the assets of the integral water service for 25 years, therefore “it had to be recovered”.
The City Council of Santa Cruz de Tenerife stopped these payments by way of return of the 59 million euros to Sacyr when Patricia Hernández (PSOE) came to power. The then mayor made this decision backed by the municipal legal services and the intervention, which found that there was no legal basis for the sale of Emmasa to Sacyr, which in practice made Emmasa a “gift” from the City Council to the multinational.
The opposition, made up of the PSOE, United We Can (UP) and Citizens, has called a press conference this Thursday to denounce “the attempt of the mayor”, José Manuel Bermúdez, not to hold an extraordinary plenary session called by these groups. According to the UP spokesperson, the fact that the City Council secretary is being investigated in this plot is one of the reasons why the government group has not agreed to hold this extraordinary plenary session. In it, the opposition also tried to address the cost it entails for Santa Cruz de Tenerife keep the bodyguards of Evelyn Alonso.
