SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, May 17. (EUROPE PRESS) –
The non-attached councilor of the La Laguna City Council, Alfredo Gómez, has filed a complaint before the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court against the PSOE senator and Urban Planning councilor, Santiago Pérez, for the commission of the alleged crimes of prevarication, embezzlement of public funds and covert contracting.
The complaint, advanced by ‘Radio Club Tenerife’ and to which Europa Press has had access, states that eight months after the creation of the Plenary Commission for the Investigation of Minor Recruitment during the period 2011-2022, not a single file when there are indications of division of public contracts in the area managed by Pérez.
Thus, the mayor’s argument is based on a report from the municipal secretary on February 9 where he already warned of an attempt to “block” the commission before the resignations of its president and the delegate.
In addition, it concludes that there are minor contracts that incur in fractioning and by not going to the public bidding they are “tainted as null and void”.
In total, it is a fractioned set of more than a dozen contracts that exceed the legal limit of 15,000 euros, and for a global amount of almost 200,000 euros, related to the installation of an irrigation network, the placement of ‘stands’ or advice on agroecology and agrotourism.
The complainant points out that the situation worsens when “in a grotesque way several contracts are made on the same day or in a very short time frame, which indicates an attempt to cover up the
true nature of the contract and to evade the controls and guarantees provided for in current legislation”.
Thus, he insists that it is “a serious case” due to the reiteration of the ‘modus operandi and with the “clear intention” of evading the controls of public procurement, while “injuring” both the general interest and the municipal coffers.
Along these lines, the complaint includes, the repeated division in public procurement “seeks nothing more than to evade the controls” that the procurement procedure itself establishes and thus ensure an “unfair result and contrary to the law”, which causes a ” deterioration” of the image of the public function and also economic damage.
In addition, it stresses that “it is impossible even to state that he was unaware of the irregularity or that the conduct is not the result of a clear will to act outside the legal system to cause an unfair result by putting his will before
public interest” given that the councilor has more than 30 years of experience in public management and is an associate professor of Constitutional Law.
However, Gómez requests that Pérez be summoned to testify before the Chamber and both the municipal secretary and the inspector as witnesses.
