The Civil Guard has arrested Marco Antonio Navarro Tacoronte, the intermediary that gives its name to the Mediador case, at the request of a Lanzarote court, as reported by EFE. However, after going to court, Navarro Tacoronte has been released after notifying him of the opening of the oral trial.
The arrest took place in a hotel in Vecindario, where the “Mediator” was staying. It was agents from the Civil Guard post of this municipality who arrested him for alleged involvement in a crime of fraud and theft, and transferred him to the duty court of San Bartolomé de Tirajana, according to sources from the Superior Court of Justice of Canary Islands (TSJC).
The businessman has been arrested for allegedly having dinner with an acquaintance, whose wallet he allegedly stole during that meeting and used this person’s credit cards to make different expenses.
Navarro Tacorronte had a search and arrest warrant for not responding to the summonses that were sent to his home to notify him of everything related to the abbreviated procedure 2589/21, which is being investigated by the Lanzarote court, which is why the Civil Guard He has detained this Tuesday and has made him available to the nearest duty court, being released after notifying him of all the communications he had pending in reference to this matter.
Navarro Tacoronte is accused of several crimes related to corruption in the plot being investigated by the Investigating Court number 4 of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, in which the former PSOE deputy Juan Bernardo Fuentes Curbelo, the former general director of Livestock of the Government of the Canary Islands Taishet Fuentes and the retired general of the Civil Guard Francisco Espinosa Navas.
The Mediator case, which shook Canary Islands politics, can be summed up in a plot made up of three main characters who, using their respective positions in the public sector and their contacts, offered businessmen the possibility of obtaining benefits or favorable treatment in exchange of the delivery of gifts, gifts or payments while they extorted commissions from farmers on the islands to reduce sanctions or receive subsidies.
The detainee, Marco Antonio Navarro Tacoronte (Gáldar, 1975) is known as the mediator, gives the case its name and is at the epicenter of the plot despite the fact that it was he who denounced the facts. He has a criminal record for theft, robbery with violence, fraud and falsification of public documents for which he has been sentenced to more than ten years in prison.
He decided to denounce the plot and hand over his two cell phones with compromising information to the judge when he was arrested as a result of a false complaint for fraud by the then director of Sports of the Cabildo de Tenerife, Ángel Luis Pérez, who thus wanted to justify to his partner some expenses of 2,750 in luxury items.
The researchers attribute to Tacoronte the role of intermediary between the businessmen and the then socialist deputy and the general of the Civil Guard.
At the apex of the plot would also be the former PSOE deputy in Congress, Juan Bernardo Fuentes Curbelo (Puerto del Rosario, 1962), a history of the party in the Canary Islands and a member of the family that controls the PSOE in Fuerteventura. Francisco Espinosa Navas (Seville 1956), known in the plot as Papá, is a retired Civil Guard general, former colonel in charge of the Las Palmas Civil Guard Command and former head of the EU mission in the fight against terrorism and organized crime in the Sahel. He is the only one of the 13 investigated who remains in prison. Investigators suspect that he was in charge of box B of the plot.
Navarro Tacoronte was arrested in Vecindario (Gran Canaria) at around 4:00 a.m., at the hotel where he was staying, and this morning he was released.
