Raise Tenerife and fall imputed

The purchase in 2012 of two plots of land in the Sports City of CD Tenerife by one of the public companies of the Tenerife Cabildo, Science and Technology Park, for 18.9 million public euros has unleashed the biggest case of urban corruption that is currently being investigated in the Canary Islands. That convoluted movement, full of crossed interests and in which important businessmen from the Island took part, has triggered two parallel investigations that are already in the courts of Tenerife. Both have been promoted by the current Government Group of the Cabildo (PSOE-Citizens) and the Prosecutor’s Office of the Provincial Court and affect the PSOE itself already Canarian Coalition. The Public Ministry has requested that a total of 24 people are called to declare as investigated for prevarication and embezzlement, the majority political positions but also civil servants, technicians and academics.

The main file, the Genetic case, encompasses the entire urban operation. The Prosecutor’s Office has just taken it to the Courts of La Laguna and has relapsed into Instruction Number 3, which has not yet opened preliminary proceedings. As Mírame Televisión advanced on Thursday, prosecutor Domingo González asks that they declare as investigated for prevarication – approving resolutions knowing that they are unfair – and embezzlement – ​​unfair or improper administration of public resources – the ten charges that were approved in four councils of administration of the Science and Technology Park, held in 2011 and 2012, the purchase of the two farms from CD Tenerife, which received 13 million, and the public-private company NAP of Western Africa Canary Islands, which obtained 5.9 million for its land millions.

Main defendants

The main defendants in this piece are Julio Pérez, Regional Minister of Justice who in one of the councils in 2012 was on behalf of the City Council of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, in which he was deputy mayor; Ricardo Melchior (CC), who at that time was president of the Cabildo and of the Science Park company; the then insular Minister of Economy, Carlos Alonso (CC); and the regional director of Road Infrastructure, José Luis Delgado, who attended as he was then the Island Councilor for Roads.

The prosecutor concludes that the directors approved the sale knowing that these lands lacked public value and that the disbursement of 18.9 million was going to plunge the public company of the Insular Corporation that acquired the municipal lots into serious economic problems. of La Laguna: Science and Technology Park. But there is another pretext used by the promoters that has called the prosecutor’s attention. Domingo González underlines “the departure of a large amount of money from the public sector destined for CD Tenerife SAD, which was a private entity.” Why does a public administration invest so much money in a public limited company plunged into a serious crisis due to mismanagement by its private managers?

President Javier Pérez’s delusions of grandeur after several years of success, and above all CD Tenerife’s almost consecutive second season in European competitions (1995-1996: the team reached the semifinals of the UEFA Cup), they end up leading the Tenerife representative of football to ruin. Converted into a private company -sports limited company- in 1992, the sports project failed miserably in 2002 despite a millionaire investment in the player squad. That year he went down to the Second Division, Javier Pérez lost the Presidency – he died two years later, in 2004 – and the club was left with a debt of more than 50 million euros.

The fall of the football team

CD Tenerife SAD had also started an ambitious project at the worst possible economic time: the construction of a sports city in Geneto, La Laguna. He had even created a real estate company –Tenerife de Inversiones y Proyectos SA–, with the participation of important construction companies on the Island, to sell part of those Geneto lands and reduce the heavy burden of debt. This attempt also failed. One of the justifications used by those responsible for the Cabildo at the time to pay 13 million public euros to CD Tenerife for one of the two lots of Geneto, now the object of the judicial investigation, was to save the football club.

The other justification has to do with a large research center. The first idea for those lots, however, was a business park. CD Tenerife had it and it failed when the auction was deserted. Later, a scientific park was planned or the center was transferred to some land belonging to the University of La Laguna (ULL) in the old Hogar Gomero, in the municipality of La Laguna, so that the Geneto land would in turn be transferred to the higher education center through a swap. The prosecutor understands that the Cabildo acquired the land knowing that the scientific center would not be able to be built in the Ciudad Deportiva del CD Tenerife, after rejecting the option of the ULL and when the scientific center was already planned for Cuevas Blancas, in the municipality of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, where it actually stands today.

The other prosecution complaint

The other complaint from the Prosecutor’s Office related to this operation is in a more advanced judicial phase as it was filed earlier, in June of last year. Judge María Isabel Pardo-Vivero, of the Investigating Court 1 of Granadilla de Abona, has already opened preliminary proceedings. The Prosecutor’s Office sees evidence 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 based in Granadilla, which in 2012 approved the absorption of the debt privately owned by the West African Canary Islands company NAP, the same company from which the Cabildo bought one of Geneto’s lots.

Among the charges that the public ministry asks to call to declare as investigated in the NAP case are, as in the Geneto case, Ricardo Melchior and Carlos Alonso (CC). But the former insular vice president Aurelio Abreu (PSOE), the deputy minister for the Fight Against Climate Change of the Government of the Canary Islands, Miguel Ángel Pérez (PSOE), and the aforementioned Eduardo Domenech and Francisco Sánchez are also denounced. The Prosecutor’s Office considers in its complaint that these 14 directors supported an operation as complex as it is fraught with legal doubts: the acquisition by the public company ITER of the half-public and half-private company NAP, “assuming with public money the considerable debts of the private party without these private partners making additional outlays, assuming any risk, or having to answer for those losses.

Nothing is what was wanted

While these two complaints for urban corruption begin their journey in the courts of the island of Tenerife, Geneto’s land still does not have a project, CD Tenerife continues its fight to reduce the debt -it has gone from 50 million to around 14- and the Cabildo continues to transfer funds to get his company Science and Technology Park out of a serious economic and financial crisis.