The Sixth Section of the Provincial Court of Santa Cruz de Tenerife acquitted Santiago Martín, former mayor of Los Silos for the PSOE, of the continued crime of administrative prevarication, considering that the former councilor did not raise the objections to circumvent the Public Sector Law, but to maintain an essential service for the population. The Prosecutor’s Office requested for him ten years of disqualification from holding public office for raising objections to pay one of the companies that sold water to the City Council for public supply. Based on the warnings of illegality raised by the intervener, the complaint against Martín was filed by a water community, which withdrew from the process a week before the trial began.
In the sentence, to which he has had access THE DAY, it is stated that Santiago Martín, who had served as president of the municipal corporation since 2003, ordered the payment of the invoices that the company Gestión de Aguas 2000 SL periodically collected for the aforementioned service.
Between August 29, 2012 and March 8, 2016, the accidental intervening secretary made an objection to the payment of these invoices because the annual supply exceeded the amount provided for in the Public Sector Contracts Law then in force to be able to consider it a minor contract (18,000 euros per year). Martín ordered the payment of the invoices as he considered the completion of the supply accredited, issuing a decree that resolved to lift each objection formulated by the official. In total there were 19 invoices paid using this formula.
At first, the complainant water community also denounced the representative of the company Gestión de Aguas 2000 in the same process, but it also dropped the accusation against him before the trial and the Prosecutor’s Office had not filed an accusation against him, so who was acquitted before the start of the statements. And during the hearing he testified only as a witness.
The three magistrates of Section VI affirm that the contracting was contrary to the Public Sector Contracts Law in force at the time of the events, since it was a supply of an essential public service that could not be articulated through the figure of the minor contract. , but that it had to be carried out after an adequate adjudication procedure, «but we cannot ignore that Gestión de Aguas 2000 was not the only company that supplied water in that period», but there were several. The magistrates also take into account the geographical reality and population distribution of Los Silos, with nuclei scattered from the coast to altitudes above 1,000 meters that require various deposits, which, technically, at this time, cannot be supplied by a sole winning company, if any. In addition, they consider that, given the small population, the human resources of the consistory are limited to have officials who carry out a bidding process for the water supply.
The Sixth Section explains that the procedure used “was not the result of a whim or arbitrary decision of the area councilor or of the defendant, but rather points to a question of technical availability for the supply of water companies and human difficulties to take out the tender ».
In the sentence, the magistrates affirm that “these data, therefore, support the allegations of the accused (Santiago Martín) and of the witness Ángel Hernández Palenzuela, who was a councilor for Waters, about the difficulty of taking out a public tender, not only because the City Council does not have qualified officials to prepare the specifications, especially technical, of the tender, but also because of the risk of being left deserted due to the difficulties associated with the dissemination of deposits and the low economic relevance of the supply» .
And they state that “these reasonable doubts lead us to exclude the crime of prevarication.” “Everything points to the fact that the decision to authorize the payments” was “aimed at safeguarding the continued provision of the public service and not at circumventing the controls required by the Public Sector Contracts Law,” the magistrates assure.
“Thanks to those who trusted me”
Santiago Martín declared yesterday to EL DÍA that “I did not enter politics to make strange or absolutely ridiculous questions, but to try to change things and for 16 years I think we changed something for the better in Los Silos.” He explained that, “since one enters this, one knows that it is a risky profession, as they say, because you can make successes and mistakes, but surely there are things in management that always border on some legal or processing aspects.” But he said that “from there to me becoming a disreputable element” is a long way. “All the suffering that I have had these years, plus that of my family, cannot be reversed with a favorable sentence or with some resources,” he clarified. He pointed out that “I only asked to be allowed to defend myself and today a sentence has proved me right with what I stated at the time.” “To those who trusted me, thank you, and there is no need for me to tell you anything, because they will continue to do so,” he commented, adding that, “to those who at some point I generated any doubts, now they have a document on which they will be able to talk and criticize for a long time.”
