The Prosecutor’s Office of the Provincial Court of Santa Cruz de Tenerife has denounced 9 charges and a lawyer for crimes of urban corruption by approving that the Cabildo bought two 30,700 square meter plots of land in 2012, from the CD Tenerife Sports City, located in Geneto, La Laguna. The Island Corporation carried out the operation through one of its companies, the Scientific and Technological Park, and paid 18.9 million euros for these lands, 13 million to CD Tenerife SAD and 5.9 million to the public-private company NAP. This is the chronology of events to understand such a complex operation.
1997 – CD Tenerife buys the land in La Laguna: Two years before the Cabildo de Tenerife began to provide CD Tenerife with millions in financial aid for its survival, the club, then chaired by Javier Pérez, acquired 99,100 square meters in Geneto and Los Baldíos, in the municipality of La Laguna, for 1.7 million euros to build a sports city. Most of the money contributed by the Insular Corporation in 1999 and 2002 goes to that project.
2005 – Division into lots: The debt of the Tenerife soccer team is so great in 2005 that it decides to divide the 99,100 square meters into several lots to sell some of them. CD Tenerife asks the Cabildo to waive the right of first refusal to auction one of these lots under the Tenerife Siglo XXI Business Park urban development project. The insular administration accepts the resignation but the auction fails as no offer is submitted. It is then that CD Tenerife shareholders and prominent businessmen on the island set up Tenerife de Inversiones y Proyectos SA, as the club’s property developer. This company acquires a lot of 30,700 square meters for 16 million after obtaining a loan of 30 million from CajaCanarias, a defunct entity. The promoter divides the farm into two: one of 17,442 square meters and another of 13,258.
2007 – NAP appears: On March 12, 2007, the entity NAP of West Africa Islas Canarias SA, in whose capital the Technological and Renewable Energy Institute (ITER, whose majority shareholder is the Cabildo) and prominent businessmen of the Island participate 50%, bought from the promoter of CD Tenerife the 17,442 square meter estate to install the Datacenter (neutral internet access point for the Canary Islands and West Africa) for 9 million euros.
2011 – CD Tenerife absorbs its promoter: CD Tenerife absorbs the real estate developer in 2011 and also its debt, which amounts to 10.6 million. The justification alleged then by those responsible for the club -Miguel Concepción has been president of the entity for five years in 2011- is the limited activity of the promoter since its constitution due to the bureaucratic obstacles that any project must overcome.
2011 – Purchase option: The next step in this complex operation takes place in April 2011. The Cabildo de Tenerife signs a private contract with CD Tenerife with an option to purchase the land of the Ciudad Deportiva, which had been inaugurated in 2003 and that only occupies a part of the 99,100 meters acquired by the club in 1997. For this contract, the Island Corporation delivers three million euros as a premium for that purchase option to the sports corporation. However, the Corporation later rejected that option, which gave it a privilege over the purchase, a decision now under the microscope of the investigators.
2021 – The operation that focuses the complaint of the Prosecutor’s Office: On January 24, 2012, the Cabildo de Tenerife definitively formalizes the acquisition of the NAP lot and another of 13,258 square meters of CD Tenerife located in the Ciudad Deportiva de Geneto through the company Parque Ciencia y Tecnológico, of the which owns 97% of the shares. The insular institution pays 18,992,460 euros for both lands -13 million for CD Tenerife SAD and 5.9 million for NAP- with the justification of locating the Science and Technology Park there. It does so after successive modifications of the agreement approved in four boards of directors of the Science and Technology Park between the previous year and that 2012. It is the point in which the evidence of corruption for the Prosecutor’s Office is concentrated, understanding that the operation was carried out when the members of the council were aware that it was not the ideal place for the scientific site, which was already being considered to be built in Cuevas Blancas, municipality of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, where in fact it is currently being built. As these lands remain without public interest -they remain without a project today-, the Science and Technology Park company suffered a serious blow to its financial and economic stability, having to face the heavy outlay of 18.9 million euros for the land and not receive liquidity from the Insular Corporation, always according to the complaint of the Public Ministry presented now to the Court of La Laguna.
2013 – NAP Debt: In 2013, the Cabildo absorbed the NAP, the company from which the Corporation bought one of the lots, established in 2006 and owned 50% by ITER and the rest by entrepreneurs from Tenerife. Before that absorption by merger in 2013 of the NAP by ITER itself, which mostly belongs to the Cabildo, ITER itself buys the shares held by private entrepreneurs or exchanges these private entrepreneurs for shares of the entity Solten II SA ( company with great profits and a high distribution of annual dividends) without the debt of the loan of the acquired land being reflected in the value of the acquisition of the shares by ITER and assuming this the existing debt of more than two million.
2020 – The ‘Messia report’: On October 9, 2020, Antonio Messía de Yraola, general comptroller of the Cabildo de Tenerife, signs a document that shortly after sends it to the criminal chamber of the Provincial Court, the Prosecutor’s Office, the Court of Auditors and the Court of Auditors. Canary accounts. The Messia report denounces “an undermining of public funds” in the complex and intricate operation by which the Cabildo buys the land of CD Tenerife’s Ciudad Deportiva. The auditor sees indications to act against those responsible for this sale for assuming an “irregular use of public funds.” It refers to the members of the board of directors of the Scientific and Technological Park entity that approved the operation after successive modifications that the Provincial Court Prosecutor’s Office now asks to investigate.
2020 – The precedents of the intervener’s brief: The Messia report comes 8 years after the urban development operation in which it observes serious irregularities. The auditor of the Cabildo is based on a report signed by the CEO of the Technological and Renewable Energy Institute (ITER) and the head of the crime prevention area of the Tenerife Science and Technology Park (PCTT), both entities dependent on the Corporation insular, which warn of a succession of irregularities in the operation constituting the possible crimes of unfair administration, prevarication, embezzlement and accounting responsibility. Pedro Martín (PSOE), president of the Cabildo, and Enrique Arriaga (Ciudadanos), vice president, acknowledged at the press conference in which they announced the transfer of the Messia report to the judicial bodies that these analyzes arose from the need to seek an economic solution to island public companies such as the Science and Technology Park. It was there when those responsible saw operations that had been able to cause a loss to the public coffers.
2021 – Complaint from the Prosecutor’s Office: The Prosecutor’s Office of the Provincial Court of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, directed by María Farnés -the same prosecutor who resolved the Las Teresitas case-, filed a complaint on December 28 after investigating the Messía report. He transfers it to the Court of La Laguna, which has not yet decided whether to open proceedings. The Public Ministry asks to testify as being investigated for prevarication and embezzlement of public funds, crimes of urban corruption, 10 positions that participated in the board of directors of the Parque Ciencia company that approved the purchase of two plots of land from the Ciudad Deportiva del Tenerife with money from the Council. Among those denounced is Julio Pérez (PSOE), Minister of Justice of the Government of the Canary Islands, and the former presidents of the Tenerife Corporation Ricardo Melchior and Carlos Alonso (CC).
2021 – It is not the first complaint from the Public Ministry: It is not the first complaint presented by the Prosecutor’s Office on this complex urban operation of the grounds of the CD Tenerife Sports City. In July 2021, the Public Ministry sees signs of the crimes of embezzlement and prevarication in the 14 members of the board of directors of ITER (Technological and Renewable Energy Institute), a public company of the Cabildo de Tenerife, which in 2012 approved the absorption of the private debt of the West African-Canary Islands company NAP. To the NAP belonged precisely one of the lands that the Cabildo bought in Geneto and that the Justice is also investigating. Among the charges that the public ministry asks to declare as being investigated in this other case are the former presidents of the Cabildo Ricardo Melchior and Carlos Alonso (CC), the former insular vice president Aurelio Abreu (PSOE) and the current deputy counselor for the Fight Against Climate Change of the Government of the Canary Islands, Miguel Ángel Pérez (PSOE). He has also requested that the other members of the ITER board of directors be declared under investigation, including Álvaro Arvelo, former president of CajaCanarias; Francisco Sánchez, director of the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands; and Eduardo Doménech, former rector of the University of La Laguna.
