The former high-ranking official of Canal de Isabel II, Adrián Martín, has testified as a witness before the Audiencia Nacional in the trial of the 'Lezo case' and has stated that, in his opinion, the initiative to build a golf course on public entity land came from the former president of Madrid, Esperanza Aguirre. He added that he considered the project now being judged for alleged irregularities to be "correct."
In this case, the former president of the Community of Madrid Ignacio González; the former managing director of Canal de Isabel II between 2003 and 2009, Ildefonso de Miguel; and the partners of the company TCT, awarded contracts that the Prosecutor's Office considers fraudulent: José Antonio Clemente, Pablo Manuel González, and Juan José Caballero are being prosecuted. The latter two are, respectively, the brother and brother-in-law of the former regional president and have denied the charges against them.
Martín has reiterated that the modification of the project to build a golf course was, as he believes, an initiative that "came from Esperanza Aguirre," although he clarified that he supported the valuation report because it was "correct" and has denied having suffered pressure to benefit any company in the public tender.
The former engineering director of Canal de Isabel II has defended that the modified contract was awarded to Dragados after obtaining "a higher score" after analyzing "technical aspects and economic aspects."
Once the award was achieved, Dragados resorted to subcontracting certain works with Tecnoconcret Proyectos de Ingeniería, commercially known as TCT, whose partners were González's brother and brother-in-law, according to the account of the Public Prosecutor's Office.
TCT was "the best offer"
The project manager, Juan Ramón Mata, has specified in his testimony that the choice of Tecnoconcret as a subcontractor was due to the fact that "it was the best offer, the most economical, the most technically favorable, and that it complied with the deadline."
Mata has detailed that building a golf course with artificial grass over a large water reservoir constituted a "difficult" challenge from a technical point of view and has maintained that Tecnoconcret provided an adequate solution for that design.
"What Tecnoconcret did was the global and complete proposal for the entire installation, from the engineering, to the supply of the material, to the assembly," Mata stated during his testimony.
For his part, the former Environment counselor Mariano Zabía has declared that "there was never any special interest in the awards" and has emphasized that he "never" perceived the existence of hidden interests on the part of political leaders.
In the same way, he has rejected that the modification of the project, initially conceived as a heliport and later transformed into a golf practice field, responded to the purpose of favoring González's relatives.
Zabía has maintained that the action "without any doubt" was beneficial for the city of Madrid and has emphasized that the works made it possible to "open to the city of Madrid a space" that, currently, is "very visited and appreciated by the neighbors."