The United We Can (Izquierda Unida-Podemos) group in the Santa Cruz de Tenerife City Council has asked the mayor, José Manuel Bermúdez (Canary Islands Coalition), to provisionally withdraw the position of the general secretary of the municipal plenary session, Luis Prieto, after that three witnesses of the Emmasa case have declared before the Court that the role of this official -already accused in this process- was essential to give the appearance of legality to the agreement adopted in 2007 in the board of directors of the water company so that the parent multinational (Sacyr Vallehermoso) could recover , improperly, the 59 million that he had paid in canon for the water company.
The City Council of Santa Cruz de Tenerife makes water more expensive for residents as a condition for Sacyr to return the money improperly collected
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This was reported this Wednesday, May 10, at a press conference by Ramón Trujillo, spokesman for Unidas Podemos -the political group complaining of this case-, accompanied by Dolores Espinosa, who is also a councilor for this left-wing alliance. Five people are under investigation in this criminal case, including the former mayor of Santa Cruz, Miguel Zerolo (CC), sentenced to seven years in jail by the urban ball on the beach of Las Teresitas.
The case came to light in 2019 during the brief period in which the Mayor’s Office ceased to be in the hands of CC and passed to the PSOE, which paralyzed payments to Sacyr when verifying that said payments, at a rate of more than 3 million per year, they were irregular. Years earlier, in 2005, the multinational Sacyr-Vallehermoso was left with the management of the integral water cycle of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, also with the Canary Islands Coalition in power. The company offered a canon of 59 million euros (10 million more than what was demanded in plenary session) for keeping the infrastructures and exploiting them. But the agreement included that this money would be progressively returned by the City Council itself to the multinational, with which taking over this business would be free for the company. With this strategy, in 2007 Sacyr had already recovered 28.2 million euros, almost half of what was invested.
Municipal technicians and the Consultative Council of the Canary Islands have already determined that this refund of the money was not legal, despite which 33.6 million were paid to Sacyr until the operation was paralyzed. It is, according to Trujillo, the “second most important case of alleged corruption in the history of Santa Cruz”, after the Las Teresitas case.
The secretary, Luis Prieto, who at the time of the events was director of the municipal Legal Department and denies having attended the aforementioned board of directors, was already being investigated in this criminal case because a witness had commented that he was present at that meeting, although it does not appear in the minutes. But three new witnesses who testified before the Court last April have corroborated “not only that he attended but that they agree that he arrived before the hour, with a proposal, which he explained, to give legal form to the return of the canon to Sacyr, which in reality was the cost of providing the water service,” said Trujillo.
The UP spokesman calls it “very serious” that three “qualified” witnesses, since they attended that meeting, “have pointed out that the current secretary of the plenary session had the role that they say he had in this allegedly criminal act.” For this reason, United We Can demand that he be removed in a precautionary manner because it is a freely appointed position and we are facing a “loss of confidence” due to the “extreme seriousness” of these events.
In addition, Trujillo asks the mayor to inform the regional Administration of this situation, as it is competent to purify disciplinary responsibilities of national authorized officials.
The councilor of the confluence of the left is struck by the fact that the City Council, through its lawyers, knows the statements of these witnesses because it is represented as a civil actor. For this reason, he reiterated that he regrets that Bermúdez has refused to allow the council to appear as a private prosecution, since it was the mayor’s private vote that decided the balance against appearing.
“He is a mayor who puts himself in profile in the face of alleged crimes of corruption,” emphasizes the UP mayor, who stresses that, to top it off, Bermúdez “defends Sacyr tooth and nail,” even through an agreement with the City Council for the that the multinational will return the money in “comfortable terms, the council agrees not to question the legality of the 2007 decision whose illegality has precisely motivated the opening of a criminal case, the company is allowed not to comply with all the planned investments and prolong the execution time of the slopes”. In addition, Trujillo has an impact, the City Council and the multinational intended to raise water rates.” It was last November, when the City Council agreed with Sacyr that the latter would return the money improperly collected to Santa Cruz, but in exchange the company wanted to make the water bill more expensive for chicharreros “8% at once, a percentage that the Canary Islands government has limited to 2.5%,” recalls Trujillo.
Finally, the councilor announces that he will do everything possible so that water management returns to public hands, because “the City Council must recover it, given the disastrous privatized management” since 2006 and for 25 years by decision of CC “.
