The Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, alleges "loss of confidence" towards the colonel in charge of the Santa Cruz de Tenerife Command, José María Tienda, dismissed yesterday Wednesday, and promises to clarify responsibilities after the investigation that is being carried out by a Madrid court for alleged irregularities in the works of Civil Guard facilities. The name of José María Tienda appears in the summary of the Mediator case due to his links with an investigated builder.
The Civil Guard "is the first interested" in clarifying the facts, the minister has defended from Brussels, where today he meets with his EU counterparts in a European Council. Proof of this, he has argued, is that it has been the Internal Affairs Unit "that has carried out all the investigations and has prosecuted them".
The elements that have been known so far have generated "a loss of confidence" towards the Store by the Interior leadership. Consequently, the Secretary of State for Security, Rafael Pérez, agreed on Wednesday the dismissal. Sources from the armed institute quoted by EFE explained that he went at the request of the chief general of the Civil Guard in the Canary Islands and ratified by the general director of the Benemérita, María Gámez.
Civil Guard sources attribute the decision to the investigation carried out by Internal Affairs and which is directed by a Madrid court to clarify alleged irregularities in the works of various facilities of the body. Among them are the Comandancia de Santa Cruz de Tenerife as one of the ranches that contracted the most suspicious works.
In the dismissal, the information that appeared about the relations of the Store with a builder investigated in the Mediator case also weighed, which can lead to a "discredit" of the Civil Guard.
A report prepared by Internal Affairs of the Civil Guard, to which Europa Press had access, reveals that between 2008 and 2019 thirteen territorial units of this body awarded works to companies managed by Ángel Ramón Tejera de León --businessman who appears in the summary of the Mediator case as a person linked to the investigated general Francisco Espinosa--for a value of more than 3.3 million euros, and that despite recording as finished some of them were not executed or were partially carried out, "what could be constitutive of the crimes of falsification of an official document, falsification of a commercial document and embezzlement".
The businessman, known by the alias 'Mon', appears on several occasions in the summary of the Mediator case as a participant in meetings in which the ringleaders of the plot were present, among them the General of the Civil Guard Francisco Espinosa and the former General Director of Livestock of the Canarian Government Tahiset Fuentes.
However, the minister has claimed "not to establish links or relationships" between this matter and the whole of the Mediator case, and has asked "that it be the investigations" that can determine it. In this sense, Marlaska has defended that the Armed Institute "is much more than one or two absolutely deplorable cases" that, in his opinion, "do not represent in any way what this body is. "The Civil Guard and its more than 80,000 men and women are much more than this, ”said the head of the Interior.
