The Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office maintains its accusation against the former president of the Community of Madrid Ignacio González for alleged irregularities in Canal de Isabel II contracts related to a golf course. At the end of the trial, the Public Prosecutor's Office has requested five years in prison and a fine of 500,000 euros for the PP leader, to whom it attributes an "essential" role in an operation that, it maintains, allowed his relatives to benefit from public funds.
The prison request is one year less than the six initially demanded by the Prosecutor's Office. Prosecutor Ana Cuenca noted this Thursday the mitigating circumstance of undue delays due to the time it took for the trial to be held. The reduction also affects the other four defendants, for whom she also requests five years in prison.
The trial, held at the Audiencia Nacional within the 'Lezo case', has been adjourned for sentencing after the defenses requested the acquittal of all the defendants. González denies having favored his relatives or having received any benefit. It will be the court that determines whether the facts maintained by the Prosecutor's Office have been proven and whether there is criminal responsibility.
The case examines two contracts linked to the construction and operation of a golf course on land belonging to the Canal de Isabel II, the public water company of the Community of Madrid. The investigated facts date back to the period when González was vice president of Esperanza Aguirre's regional government and presided over the Canal.
His relatives' company, under suspicion
The Anti-Corruption thesis is that the awards were oriented to benefit González's brother and brother-in-law through the participation of Tecnoconcret, known as TCT. The prosecutor maintains that the company received money for unnecessary intermediation and that the former president's relatives thus obtained just over 294,000 euros.
"The award was made in a clearly pre-ordered manner with only one purpose, to allow the relatives" of González to enrich themselves, Cuenca stated in her final conclusions. According to the accusation, the then vice president played a decisive role because he was the Canal's highest contracting body.
The first of the examined actions refers to the works on the roof of the public company's third reservoir, awarded in 2004 to Dragados. The Prosecutor's Office states that the construction company had already closed the contract with TCT even before that award was formalized. A subsequent contract related to the management and operation of the sports facilities is also being investigated.
For the prosecutor, TCT's intervention was unnecessary because the company lacked the means, experience, and solvency to carry out the work and had to resort to other companies. For this reason, she described the company as "a commission agent company" created, according to her thesis, to collect for intermediations with Canal's money.
Alongside González, Ildefonso de Miguel, who was managing director of the public company between 2003 and 2009, and TCT partners José Antonio Clemente, Pablo Manuel González, and Juan José Caballero are in the dock. The latter two are, respectively, the brother and brother-in-law of the former regional president of Madrid.
Former president Esperanza Aguirre testified as a witness during the trial and acknowledged that the idea for the golf course had been hers. The process focuses on the alleged irregularities in the contracts related to the project and on the intervention that the Prosecutor's Office attributes to the accused.
González denies having favored anyone
The defense of the former PP president has requested his acquittal and maintains that during the hearing "not a single piece of evidence" has been presented to support the accusations against him. His lawyer, Esteban Mestre, has denied that González conditioned the awards, influenced them, or received benefits from TCT's activity.
González himself denied before the court on Wednesday having intervened in the contracts to favor his relatives. "I have never asked for anything in favor of anyone," he stated during his testimony. He also maintained that his brother's and brother-in-law's relationship with the company was subsequent to the awarding of the contracts.
The defense of the two relatives has also rejected the Anti-Corruption thesis and has maintained that TCT carried out commercial intermediation tasks. After hearing the final reports, the court offered the accused the last word, which all of them declined.
This is one of the different pieces into which the 'Lezo case' was divided, opened to investigate alleged irregularities linked to the Canal de Isabel II during PP governments in the Community of Madrid. González was arrested in 2017 and remained several months in provisional prison. Now, almost a decade later, the Audiencia Nacional must resolve this first trial against him for one of the branches of the case.
