The corruption plot investigating the Mediator case lasted from September 2020 to July 2021. It lasted about nine months, during which the mediator, Antonio Navarro Tacoronte, promised seven businessmen from the islands, Valencia and Madrid that they would be freed from sanctions or given to them to provide licenses, contracts and subsidies. For their part, they reportedly agreed to pay bribes, either in cash or in kind – through meals and parties, some with prostitutes. However, the businessmen got a zero return on their investment.
More information
And this despite the fact that the summary prepared so far contains up to 21 transfers from six of the companies examined to the current account of the Navarro Tacoronte couple, Irene Megolla, totaling 83,000 euros, which cannot be justified by any income. Three of the companies involved also donated 15,000 euros to the Asociación Vega Tetir sports club, chaired by former Socialist MP Juan Bernardo Fuentes Curbelo, who resigned after the scandal broke out and who the investigation identifies as the alleged leader of the corrupt organisation. And that’s not counting some payments for meals and parties.
Esteban Banús
“Since before Christmas we’ve been saying ‘yes, tomorrow, yes, tomorrow, yes, tomorrow’ … Damn, in the end so much tomorrow that you say: maybe there is no tomorrow”
The summary thus documents the dissatisfaction of most of the accused businessmen, who at one point told Antonio Navarro Tacoronte that they had stopped expecting results from the organization. In April, identified industrialist Esteban Banús — who, along with his wife Inmaculada Mima Roca, got on the network in late 2021 to allegedly speed up the processing of an urban development permit — had a phone conversation with the middleman he was involved in, recorded by their minor ones hopes. “It was just nothing, nothing at all, nothing,” he says, “and we’ve been saying ‘yes, tomorrow, yes, tomorrow, yes, tomorrow’ since before Christmas… Damn, tomorrow ends so much that you say: it will be that there is no tomorrow”.
On May 11, the month that begins the irreversible descent of the conspiracy, a conversation ensues between the last businessman to fall into the organization’s supposed networks, Raúl Gómez Rojo, and the intermediary who offered the first a bill reproaches him for her complaints to General Espinosa Navas. “Tomorrow we will make it very clear,” Gómez Rojo tells him, “because I’m fed up. Hours on the phone to get nothing, so we’ll make it very clear tomorrow. This businessman paid at least 22,000 euros into the bank accounts of Miguel Ángel Robayna (owner of a construction company and allegedly responsible for preparing invoices to legitimize the deals) and Irene Megolla, Antonio Navarro Tacoronte’s partner.
What affects most is what happens closer. Subscribe so you don’t miss anything.
subscribe to
Raul Gomez Red
“I’m on my balls. Hours and hours on the phone to get nothing out, so we’ll make it clear tomorrow.”
angry businessmen
“Many businessmen are upset that what the plan promised has not been fulfilled and are beginning to take their grievances directly to leadership,” the summary of the case, which the judge orders, reads. Not surprisingly, Navarro Tacoronte sent him an audio message on June 22, urging Fuentes Curbelo not to heed the allegations of Miguel Ángel Robayna, who threatened to sue him. “Cause when they call you, you say, ‘You don’t have to tell me anything’ and end it, friend, okay?”
For his part, the Valencian businessman José Suárez Esteve knew General Espinosa Navas from the time when the High Command directed the GAR-SI SAHEL project in Africa (between 2017 and 2021), which commissioned corresponding drones. Suárez intended to gain a foothold in the islands through his Canary Islands special zone. In February he was skeptical in a conversation with Navarro Tacoronte. “I don’t know what’s happening, this four-day trip, I saw you for an hour, from everything you told me would happen, help, selling drones, etc., not to [sic] Nothing happened, don’t make me think badly, business is business but playing with my children’s bread is NOT”.
Jose Suarez Esteve
“Don’t make me think badly, business is business but play with my children’s bread… I’m going to speak to Juan Bernardo and ask him to break the partnership, collect what he did and give me back the rest of the money.” .”
Alberto Montesdeoca
“You deceived me. I have to give everything back”
A month later, the Valencian appeared to be giving up, so he let the agent know. “And in terms of business in the Canary Islands, I see that there is nothing. I will speak to Juan Bernardo and ask him to terminate the partnership, collect what he has done and return the rest of the money…”.
Cheese entrepreneur Alberto Montesdeoca, based in southern Tenerife, contacted the organization in November 2020 with the aim of obtaining a fine of 74,000 euros for failing to correctly justify some subsidies. Navarro Tacoronte allegedly sent him from Fuentes Curbelo so they could solve these files. Payments and visits followed one another without success. The decline of the organization was already noticeable in May 2021, but the middleman still tried to squeeze businessman Montesdeoca García to the end. Until the end comes. On July 5, the cheese maker appears to have ended the alleged conspiracy with a message to the mediator: “You cheated on me,” he writes. “I have to return everything.”
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits