After almost 17 years of investigation and judicial proceedings, the Canarian branch of the Philatelic Forum case is settled with a pyrrhic fine of 2,160 euros, plus legal costs, for the builder José Ana Pérez Labajos, convicted of bribery. This is stated in the sentence that the Superior Court of Justice of the Canary Islands (TSJC) made public yesterday, which puts an end to the case, halfway. And it is that through an order issued on June 30, It was agreed to open a separate case for the prosecution of the other defendant, Herminia Gil, former socialist councilor in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, first, and, later, former adviser to the then mayor Miguel Zerolo, from CC. At the time of the jury trial held last month, Gil was not in a position to testify or affirm himself in accordance with the sentence, according to a forensic medical report.
The Provincial Court of Santa Cruz de Tenerife considers it is proven that Herminia Gil was elected councilor of the PSOE in the city council of the capital of Tenerife for the period 1999-2003. But, as a result of her vote in favor of the purchase of the Las Teresitas land, she was filed and expelled from said party. In 2003, the former alderman Zerolor he hired her as an adviser because of the friendship that united them – the former mayor entered prison in 2019, after being convicted of another corruption case, linked to the purchase of the land of Las Teresitas from the businessmans Antonio Plasencia and Ignacio González Martín, who died in prison. For carrying out various public functions, as well as for his knowledge and personal relationships with authorities and other officials of said consistory, where he was mayor for 16 years, he received various amounts of money from businessman José Ana Pérez Labajos to guarantee the success of two urban projects. pending approval or modification in said administration.
Between 2000 and 2007, the businessman gave various amounts of money and kept Herminia Gil on the payroll in some of his companies, with a salary much higher than the rest of his employees and without carrying out any work for them. In fact, he did not even go to the headquarters of said companies.
One of its objectives was to reclassify several parcels located in Valle Tahodio to urban land.
Such actions sought to get Gil to mediate before the city council to promote the reclassification of several parcels in the Tahodio Valley for the construction of homes and the modification of the administrative concession of the San Andrés marina in Santa Cruz. In the first case, the soil continued to be rustic, after reports from the Urban Planning area and the Canarian Government. In those years, Pérez Labajos wanted to promote, without success, marinas in various enclaves of the metropolitan area, the north and the south of Tenerife.
Judge Fernando Paredes believes it has been proven that Gil received more than 416,000 euros from the environment of José Ana Pérez Labajos, through monetary compensation, payments in kind (home rental and autonomous insurance), transfers, loans, advances, various efforts, bonuses and reductions in the price of the house and garage acquired by the socialist exedil in San Andrés.
The builder paid the monthly rent for Gil’s house in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, estimated at 601 euros, between mid-2002 and December 2007. In mid-2006, Gil bought from Pérez Labajos, through the company Inversiones Tahodio, a house and a garage in the town of San Andrés for 60,101 euros. At the notary, the selling firm acknowledged that it had already collected such an amount from the buyer, as well as the IGIC.
But the researchers concluded that The exedil did not pay such property with her money, since she did not request a loan to acquire it, nor was any movement detected in her accounts.or that corresponds to such an operation, not even the output of monthly installments to satisfy a mortgage.
The businessman paid the rent for his house and gave a flat in San Andrés to Zerolo’s ex-adviser
But the Tenerife branch of this fraud has a national context. Philatelic Forum was a Spanish company of tangible assets intervened in court, together with Afinsa, on May 9, 2006. Its managers were accused of fraud, money laundering, punishable insolvency and unfair administration. The main defendants were sentenced in 2018 to sentences of up to 12 years in prison and the sentences were upheld by the Supreme Court.
In reality, it worked like a Ponzi scheme, investigators and law enforcement have concluded. He promised the clients he captured fixed returns, which did not depend on the market, and which were much higher than those of traditional investments. On this occasion, the hook was in the supposed revaluation of the stamps in which he claimed to invest his clients’ money. A very high number of people, 269,000, entrusted their savings to the Philatelic Forum and were affected by fraud.
At the end of 2006, the then judge of the National Court Baltasar Garzón found in the Madrid headquarters of the Philatelic Forum a writing attributed to the architect Julio Aumente in which alleged bribes were collected to promote the two projects acquired from businessman José Ana Pérez Labajos: the construction of an urbanization in Valle Tahodio and the modification of the administrative concession of the San Andrés marina. None of those projects came to fruition.
