Marco Antonio Navarro Tacoronte, the man who allegedly mediated in the corrupt plot that has former PSOE deputy Juan Bernardo Fuentes Curbelo as its “upper vertex”, has exchanged his expansive presence in the media for a discreet but intense battle in court investigating the alleged plot of favors.
The baptized as a mediator in – in the eyes of the magistrate – the “criminal organization” of 'Tito Berni' has now turned his attention to the public defenders who assisted him in the early stages of the investigation. It also puts in the trigger the background of the successive occasions in which he was summoned by the National Police at that time.
After asking the instructor to revoke the consent she gave at the beginning of the process so that the agents could access their electronic devices, her lawyer Rachid Mohamed Hammu has requested a battery of witnesses that include the two lawyers assigned to her client by the free justice.
The defense wants to know why a lawyer was assigned to him in February 2022 and in April of the same year another lawyer represented him. For this reason, it requests that the Illustrious Bar Association of Santa Cruz de Tenerife be required to report on the reasons. As Rachid Mohamed explains in his letter, this change, he says, “contravenes what is established in article 31 of the Law on Free Legal Assistance”. In addition, it requests that the instructor agree to the appearance of Plácido Alonso Peña Fumero, the first lawyer of Navarro Tacoronte. He assisted him when he was arrested, although they were later separated.
Rachid Mohamed also puts the magnifying glass on the Group of Technological Crimes of the Provincial Brigade of Judicial Police of Tenerife.
He wants the judge to force the unit to make a detailed report or, failing that, “provide documentation” on the appearances and testimonials of his patron. Also to certify whether or not he was “assisted by legal representation”.
Finally, he requests that the dismissal of the fraud case be incorporated into the case, which was archived, but which nonetheless started the Mediator case since it was through this procedure that Navarro Tacoronte made his telephone number available to the investigators uncovering photographs and meetings. Now he wants it back and his analysis stopped.
In January 2022, he contains the indictment, handed over his phone and allowed investigators to analyze it.. On February 22, he testified again in court and put on the table the name of Fuentes Curbelo -'Tito Berni'- and his nephew, Taishet Fuentes, who had succeeded his uncle as General Director of Agriculture of the Canary Islands Government.
On April 12, 2022, the so-called mediator made a new statement in which he delved deeper into the essence of the “criminal group”. That day, he introduced the General of the Civil Guard Francisco Espinosa, the only member of the plot that the judge put in jail. Only two months later Taishet Fuentes was dismissed as general director of the Canarian Government with the (still secret) investigations open on the channel. The regional president, Ángel Víctor Torres, attributed his departure from the Executive to a “loss of confidence.”