Matos revealed Derbah a secret judicial investigation

The socialist from Tenerife Gustavo Matos, former president and current second vice president of the Parliament of the Canary Islands, decoured out on Tuesday any involvement in the corrupt plot led by the Lebanese businessman based in the south of Tenerife Mohamed Jamil Derbahin provisional prison since May 1 accused of leading an organized crime plot in the south of Tenerife.

In a press conference that lasted an hour and 12 minutes, held at the headquarters of the Parliament of the Canary Islands, Matos admitted that he met with Derbah and his lawyer, Jacob Haubbi, president of the Association of Young Lawyers of Tenerife, also arrested for belonging to the network, in a restaurant in El Corte Inglés. In that meeting, Matos says that Derbah told him that he was suffering coercion from Paisano police officers related to “a war” between commanders of the National Police of Tenerife of which he felt victim following the inspections in cannabis clubs of his property that he managed in the south of the island.

The politician, a member of the regional executive of the PSOE in the Canary Islands, put these alleged criminal acts of agents and internal battles in the body that Derbah had transmitted to him to know the knowledge of the Government subdelegate central in the province of Santa Cruz de Tenerife,Jesús Javier Platabecause I felt it was his “obligation.” Plata just answered, without going into more details as Matos said, that a police investigation had been opened and that the case was prosecuted.

Matos clarified that he did it at a meeting he held with the sub -delegate the day after the meeting with the Lebanese businessman. At first of the appearance before the media, the second vice president of the Canarian Parliament remarked that he did not maintain any more contact – in the name or call – related to this matter, which he used to emphasize that “no mediation had occurred.”

The call

However, at the end of the press conference he ended up admitting that he did have a new contact: he received two days later a call from Mohamed Derbah. «He asked me and told him that I had already done the management and that they told me that this was being investigated and judicialized. This conversation could have lasted 25 or 30 seconds».

That is, Matos transmitted to Derbah, in full process of the investigations that a judge of Arona keeps under summary, who was an open judicial procedure. Three months after this meeting, on April 29, internal affairs agents in the south of Tenerife dismantle the largest criminal organization operating in Tenerife led by Derbah. In the intervention, eight people were arrested, including Derbah, his lawyer and three police officers, one retired. The only one who has been sent to provisional prison by Arona’s Court of Instruction number 3 is Derbah.

Gustavo Matos, 52, answered all the questions of the journalists after the day before it was known that an internal affairs report links it with the Derbah organization. As he advanced The worldInternal matters points out that Matos offered Derbah mediating with the Central Government delegation in the islands, in the hands of the PSOE, to stop inspections to the cannabis clubs that acted, according to these investigations, as covers of a cocaine and heroine sales network. This network would handle real estate interests and others related to private security and hospitality, in addition to drug trafficking.

The relationship with Derbah

Matos denied that he has had “the slightest business, economic or professional relationship” with Derbah beyond knowing for years for common friends, and that he agreed to meet with him, at the request of the businessman, on January 29 at about 6:30 p.m. because he knew him “like many other people from Tenerife society.”

Matos feels a victim of a police war. He wonders how this report could be filtered when the judge has decreed the summary secret and, therefore, only the judicial and police officers who instruct the investigations. Therefore, and before a fact that considers “the only and flagrant illegality in this whole matter,” the internal affairs itself has requested and announced that will adopt judicial measures to defend your honorability.

Gustavo Matos also assured in the appearance before the media that He would have avoided an encounter with Lebanese businessman Mohamed Derbah if he had knowledge that the investor based in Tenerife was involved in alleged illegal activities. “If I had known that Derbah was in something illicit I would not have gathered with him,” he quoted textually.

In the transcription of another part of the conversation that Matos had with Derbah in El Corte Inglés, the head of the criminal and corrupt plot reminds him that Fernando Grande-Marlaska, current Minister of the Interior, investigated him in 2003 when he was judge of the National Court and wanted to stop him for a previous case. And is that indeed It wasn’t the first time Derbah was investigated and even provisionally imprisoned for alleged crimes. In 2001, 2003 and 2005 he was already arrested in the marking of the Cedro operation, in which he was accused of fraud and money laundering for irregular activity in the Time-Sharing or sale of tourist apartments in shared time. They were investigations that had a great media impact at local, national and international level.

Derbah’s background

As a consequence of the first of these arrests, in 2001, he remained nine months in prison but ended up being released, because police and judicial inquiries failed to confirm crimes. Since last May 1, he has been in provisional prison again by order of the Arona Court number 3.

The relationship that Derbah maintained with the British gangster John Palmer, who also settled in the south of Tenerife, is also well known by Tenerife. Palmer is also known as the brain of the theft of the twentieth century, the robbery committed in London in December 1983 in the Brinks Mat security company. It provided the robbers a booty of 30 million euros in gold and platinum bullion. Palmer was killed in 2015 in the United Kingdom.

As for the PSOE response to the revelation of this meeting with Derbah admitted by Matos himself, the Vice President of the Parliament of the Canary Islands said Tuesday at the press conference that Santos CerdánSecretary of Organization of the National PSOE, and Nira Fierrohis counterpart from the Canarian socialists, whom he explained on Monday what happened, have supported him. He even said that he has received messages of support from politicians from other parties, such as Canarian coalition and Popular Party.

Publicly, no one from the PSOE went to social networks to defend it. The only statement of the Socialists, sent by the Regional Directorate, just announced that an informative procedure has been opened to Gustavo Matos “in compliance with the Statutes and Regulations of the Party.” “By virtue of this decision, and within the ordinary channel of the PSOE, a designated instructor will be responsible for processing the file, in a transparent and guarantee manner with the right to honor and defense of the affected person,” concludes the brief socialist statement.

“There is no case”

The Central Government delegate in the Canary Islands, Anselmo Pestanasaid Tuesday that “There is no case” regarding his department on the relations attributed to the socialist deputy Gustavo Matos with the criminal network of Tenerife and expressed “all support” to police work.

“There was only a contact with the sub -delegate in which he explained that there was an investigation in progress,” added Pestana. The delegate recalled, in statements collected by the EFE agency, that these investigations have resulted “at the close of many cannabis clubs in the south of Tenerife, within the framework of anti -drug operations that occur in the Canary Islands”, which are supported by the Government delegation. On the role he played or did not play Matos, the Government delegate summoned journalists to the statements given by the second vice president of the Canarian Parliament at a press conference.

The presence of Moar

There was a third person, in addition to Derbah and his lawyer, in the encounter with Matos. This is the former head of the Provincial Brigade of the Judicial Police of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Francisco Moarwhich would then be arrested and released in La Coruña, without making a brought to court, which caused discomfort in the judge that investigates the case.

On the presence of Francisco Moar, Matos just said that there was a third person but did not know her. «There was a beard man who was a minute, got up and left; I don’t know who it was, ”he said about a well -known police position in the Canary Islands, who was head of the Provincial Brigade of the Judicial Police of Santa Cruz until he was separated by an internal file.

Moar is one of the three police officers investigated. He had denounced the mediator case, another alleged corruption plot discovered in 2023 in the Canary Islands. In his home in La Coruña he had 145 grams of cocaine when he was located by the National Police. He is waiting for his statement to be taken and his judicial situation is known in this investigation.

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