SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, March 18 (EUROPA PRESS) –
The former mayor of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Patricia Hernández, has valued the sale of the ‘Auditorio’ building for 22 million euros to the Government of the Canary Islands, which added to the previous sale of the Education Department building, represents a restitution to the coffers municipalities of 54 of the 95 million euros embezzled in the ‘Teresitas case’.
Patricia Hernández has expressed her satisfaction with this step taken thanks to the management carried out by the municipal government team during the year that she held the Mayor’s Office, obtaining for the City Hall’s coffers “all the money that was embezzled by the party companions of the current councilor, José Manuel Bermúdez, in the biggest case of corruption in the history of the Canary Islands”.
Hernández wanted to recall that while Bermúdez’s “inactivity” “allowed the convicts to move the money and seize assets, putting the recovery of what was stolen at risk,” she acted “with tenacity and courage to recover the money in record time in a case unique in Spain, where the embezzled plus interest is recovered”.
The former mayor has stressed that this money “is going to be used to improve the well-being of chicharreros and chicharreras” starting in May: “Santa Cruz cannot allow these funds to be wasted, once again, on promises and infographics that are presented year after year and never built.
Regarding the alleged appropriation that the current government team is making of the merit of the recovery, Patricia Hernández explained that in just one year of government they managed to repair an issue that during the decade of José Manuel Bermúdez’s government was “absolutely paralyzed”. , recalling that in June 2019, when accessing the Mayor’s Office, “there were 100 euros in the account destined for the return of the money.”
“They did not have the will to make the convicted pay. Neither in 2017 did they request the provisional execution of the sentence, nor in 2019 would they have filed, as we did, the complaints for the removal of assets that forced what we are seeing today: Santa Cruz has recovered 54 million euros thanks to a job that should have been done much earlier” he added.
The socialist leader has valued the purchase by the Government of the Canary Islands of the ‘Auditorio’ building, which “will alleviate the collapse experienced by the judicial headquarters in Santa Cruz”, but affirmed that what was done by Bermúdez in the recovery of the money from Las Teresitas ” is still nothing”
Finally, he stressed that this was one of the priorities of the socialist group: “Recover every last euro of the money stolen from Santa Cruz, and we did it in record time.”
