Angel Ramon Tejera de Leon, a businessman in the construction sector of Lanzarote, who is mentioned in the summary of the Mediator case, has benefited from the award of about twenty Civil Guard works since 2016, according to the investigators in the case. As El Periódico de España, from the Prensa Ibérica group, has learned exclusively, some of these awards have resulted in a parallel criminal investigation which is kept open in a Investigating Court of Madrid for at least one alleged crime of documentary falsification which is initially attributed to him along with another industrialist and two senior officials from the Civil Guard, one of them being Lieutenant General Pedro Vázquez Jaraba.
The name of Tejera de León appears mentioned up to five times in the summary of the ‘Mediator case’ and always linked to the same meeting held on November 4, 2020 at the Escuela de Tenerife hotel. There, the builder coincided with other characters accused in the Canary Islands case of alleged corruption such as Marco Antonio Navarro Tacoronte, the intermediary that gives its name to the case; the former General Director of Livestock of the Government of the Canary Islands, Taishet Fuentes; General of the Civil Guard Francisco Javier Espinosa -the only one of those investigated who is in preventive detention at the moment- and the businessman Antonio Bautista Prado.
He boasted of friendship with Zapatero
During the meeting, according to the summary of the ‘Meditor case’, Tejera boasted that owns 17 homes on the coast of Lanzarote and that former President José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero was interested in acquiring the largest house. He added that he currently had all of them rented “except the one that is used by him,” according to the report of the Deputy Operations Directorate of the Civil Guard Internal Affairs Service.
The former president ended up buying a farm on the island, in the Famara area, in 2018, to use it as a second home. On his personal Facebook profile, Tejera, alias ‘Mon’, also boasted of his relationship with Zapatero. In a post, he also boasted of meeting the former president in the summer of 2012 in Panama.
Tejera is not being formally investigated in this process directed from Tenerife by the Judge María de los Ángeles Lorenzo-Cáceresbut he has declared himself under investigation in the case that has been followed since the end of 2021 by the Investigating Court number 3 of Madrid, as this newspaper has investigated, for the alleged irregularities in the works awarded in 13 Civil Guard headquarters spread over the entire national territory.
He also involved in these proceedings Vazquez Jarava, currently lieutenant general in the reserve, occupied at the time of the events that are being analyzed one of the highest-ranking positions in the armed institute at the head of the General Support Subdirectorate of the Civil Guard.
The origin of the investigation
The investigations come from another procedure initiated in 2019 by the Investigating Court number 2 of Ávila, and have their origin in a investigation of the Department of Internal Affairs of the Benemérita, that uncovered the contracts that the companies obtained Angrasurcor SL and Solocorcho SL, whose sole administrator is Ramón Tejera.
For the moment, both Tejera de León and a second businessman, SGE, who would be linked to the same contracts, have taken a statement as defendants in this proceeding. They have also been questioned by the Madrid judge, Vázquez Jarava and a commander, also as investigated for alleged documentary falsification.
Why a Canadian company?
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The investigations have managed to conclude for the moment that the person in charge of the Canary Islands companies would have reached an agreement to hire waterproofing and painting works in a total of thirteen commands of the Civil Guard. The items earmarked for these works are not very high, but it is being investigated whether their billing increased irregularly, as well as the reasons why it was precisely decided to award them to Canarian companies.
The lieutenant colonel who at that time was the Head of the Civil Guard Command in Ávila assured during the internal investigation of the Benemérita thate the contracting of the companies of Ramón Tejera de León “came determined” by Vázquez Jarava. Given that the matter seemed to exceed what happened in the Command initially investigated in Castilla y León, the Avila court refrained from this matter in favor of a Madrid court, which accepted the case and has been investigating it since then.