Two workers who were allegedly hired illegally by the City Council of La Victoria de Acentejo due to their links to the Popular Party (PP) admitted yesterday that they did not sign any contract with the Consistory, but merely passed bills. This was indicated in the first session of a trial in which it is a matter of elucidating whether the former mayor Haroldo Martín (CC) and the councilor Fermín Correa – who belonged to the PP and later was a non-attached mayor – committed crimes of prevarication, for which They ask for ten years of disqualification.
Haroldo Martín and Fermín Correa will testify on the second day of the trial
The genesis of the procedure is in a complaint filed in 2014 by former socialist mayor Manuel Correa, who testified during the session held this Tuesday at the Santa Cruz Palace of Justice. The latter stated that the City Council of La Victoria is small and therefore it was impossible for Martín not to know what was happening. According to him, the number of municipal workers is reduced and in each plenary session, in the section of answers and questions, it was raised who were those people who were also working in the Consistory and in what regime they were.
Neither Haroldo Martín nor Fermín Correa declared yesterday. One and the other, whose defenses are being handled by lawyers Esteban Sola and Pedro Revilla -respectively-, requested to do so once all the evidence against them had been submitted, for which they will intervene on the second day of the trial, which will be held on the 8 April starting at 9:30 a.m. The municipal secretary of the time and other witnesses are also summoned for the next month.
The words of Manuel Correa, public accusation and that has Alfonso Delgado as a lawyer, clash with the arguments maintained in recent years by Haroldo Martín, who has publicly maintained that he was unaware of the facts. “I have absolutely nothing to do with the two hirings that Fermín Correa made and I have limited myself to paying some bills, which came with the approval of the delegate councilor and without any qualms,” said the former mayor of CC in an interview in this newspaper in January 2019. «As soon as the intervener made the first objection, I gave the order to cut the payments. Then there were two previous invoices, pending payment, which were paid so as not to incur illicit enrichment,” said the nationalist on that same occasion.
In yesterday’s appointment, which lasted approximately four hours, the intervenor also testified, referring to a objection raised by former mayor Haroldo Martín.
