Justice files the case against 12 of the 14 investigated in the NAP case, including Carlos Alonso (CC), former president of the Cabildo de Tenerife, and Aurelio Abreu (PSOE), former vice president of the Island Corporation. It is a procedure on alleged irregularities in the absorption 10 years ago by the public company ITER, of the Cabildo de Tenerife, of another public-private company, the technological NAP. The judge of the Investigating Court Number 1 of Granadilla de Abona, María Isabel Pardo-Vivero, considers that “the perpetration of the crime does not appear duly justified” in the actions of these 12 people, who are no longer investigated and leave the judicial procedure.
In an order notified yesterday, the magistrate maintains Ricardo Melchior, president of the Cabildo de Tenerife by CC between 1999 and 2013, and to Manuel Cendagorta, who was managing director of the Technological and Renewable Energy Institute of Tenerife (ITER).
Judge María Isabel Pardo-Vivero thus accepts the request of the prosecutor Olga Méndez, who in a letter last July requested the provisional dismissal of the case for these 12 people. Among the positions in which the judge and the public ministry do not see criminal conduct there are also personalities from the social and economic sphere of the Island such as Álvaro Arvelo, former president of CajaCanarias; Eduardo Doménech, former rector of the University of La Laguna; and Francisco Sánchez, director of the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands (IAC). Or positions of the Canarian Government such as the Deputy Minister for the Fight Against Climate Change, Miguel Ángel Pérez (PSOE).
The NAP case, brought to justice by the current Government of the Cabildo de Tenerife (PSOE and Ciudadanos, with the external support of Sí Podemos Canarias), investigates whether there were irregularities in an ITER board of directors held in 2012 in which this company of the Tenerife Cabildo approved the acquisition of a half public and half private company, NAP (Network Access Point, internet access point) of West Africa-Canary Islands. It did so “assuming with public money the large debts of the private party without these private partners making additional outlays, assuming any risk, Nor did they have to answer for those losses, ”as the complaint of the public ministry of June 29 of last year that opened the procedure assures.
Then, the Prosecutor’s Office of the Provincial Court considered that it was necessary to investigate all the directors when finding evidence of a crime. Then he concluded, once the investigation was advanced and after the testimony of the defendants and witnesses, that these 12 members of that board of directors who supported the ITER operation did not commit any illegality. The judge instructing the NAP case, María Isabel Pardo-Vivero, now confirms the conclusion of the prosecutor Olga Méndez.
The list of people to whom the case is filed It is completed by Raquel Lucía, CEO of the INtech entity of the Cabildo; Nicolás Díaz, former CEO of the Technological Institute of the Canary Islands; the former councilors of the Cabildo Antonio García Marichal (CC), Magaliz López (CC) and Jesús Morales (CC); and Esteban González (PP), former mayor of Urban Planning of Granadilla. They all represented their parties or entities on the ITER council.
«It cannot be proven, at least for now, that the aforementioned investigated [los 12 a los que se ha archivado finalmente la causa] had real and effective knowledge of the economic situation” of the NAP, because, as the prosecutor continues to explain and the magistrate agrees, “the other two investigated, Ricardo Melchior and Manuel Cendagorta, would have worried about hiding, hindering or preventing access to the rest from those investigated to the documentation». These hidden documents “are necessary to understand that an economic operation was being carried out in clear detriment to the interests of ITER”, the public company of the Cabildo. The public ministry also assured that the loans for the absorption of the NAP were “irregular” and “arranged without the private capital partners assuming any guarantee.”
The prosecutor and the judge are surprised, as they say in their writings, “the maneuvers aimed at hiding the real information since the consolidated memory of the accounts of the ITER entity was delivered to the members of the board of directors, instead of to provide the annual economic report of the NAP entity, which reflected the true economic situation of the absorbed company’.
The NAP case, which according to the judge and prosecutor could have caused a large economic hole in the Cabildo’s public coffers, arises from another that investigates justice in parallel, also related to the Insular Corporation: the Geneto case. He was also denounced by the current Government of the Cabildo. In the Geneto case, the Prosecutor’s Office denounced Julio Pérez (PSOE), current spokesman for the Canary Islands Government and Minister of Justice and Security, for crimes of corruption. Pérez is summoned to testify today at noon in the Palace of Justice of Santa Cruz de Tenerife before the judge of the Investigating Court Number 5 of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Luz Casañas Cabrera.
The letter from the public ministry affects an urban development operation for which the former presidents of the Insular Corporation Ricardo Melchior and Carlos Alonso, and the director of Road Infrastructure of the Government of the Canary Islands, José Luis Delgado (PSOE), are also being investigated. Justice studies in this Geneto case alleged irregularities in the purchase in 2012 by the Cabildo de Tenerife of two plots of land of the CD Tenerife Sports City, located in Geneto, La Laguna, for 18.9 million euros. The NAP company was the seller of one of these lands.
