«I consider it a good thing that matters so noteworthy, and perhaps never before heard or seen, should come to the knowledge of many and not be buried in the grave of oblivion.» With these same words, Lázaro de Tormes opened his prologue to justify the need to bring the miseries and cunning of his time to light. Four centuries later, the maxim has acquired a literal meaning in the corridors of the Las Palmas Port Authority. Despite institutional efforts to close the matter with rulings that reduce the leaks to a mere «excess of zeal» and a labyrinth of labor lawsuits that appears designed to lull the proceedings into inactivity, the documented facts threaten to break through the wall of silence. The criminal case remains active in court precisely to prevent the port’s biggest documentary scandal from being buried in the grave of bureaucratic oblivion.
Fog of war
The judicial front has become trapped in a labyrinth of preliminary legal issues and alleged defensive tactics. The alleged procedural strategy of the civil servant—who chose to sue the port authority’s senior management, arguing that the disciplinary measures and departmental reassignment constituted retaliation after she refused to alter a report—has succeeded in muddying the pace of the proceedings. As the labor dispute over the validity of her reassignment became intertwined with the administrative and investigative actions, the judge handling the criminal case saw the possibility of making decisive progress in the investigative proceedings into the ‘Wikileaks’ affair being examined come to a halt.
In the management of public infrastructure, institutional paralysis is often the most effective method of neutralizing the impact of a corruption scandal. The intricate legal conflict shaking the Las Palmas Port Authority, which has implicated former president Luis Ibarra, has entered a cycle of procedural shadow and stagnation. The suspension of the substantive labor proceedings has erected a technical barrier preventing Investigating Court No. 6 in Las Palmas from moving decisively toward clarifying the extremely serious alleged irregularities committed in the management of the maritime-terrestrial public domain. There was a ruling in April 2023, but it was appealed, and that is what is currently before Investigating Court No. 6. According to *Canarias 7*, the order stated that the articles on which the complaint was based «do not fit the requirements of Article 439, which defines negotiations prohibited to public officials, nor does it refer to the persons and conduct covered by Article 440» of the Criminal Code.
A direct communications channel
The core of the judicial proceedings revolves around the actions of the former head of the Public Domain department, E. M. Through a succession of internal complaints filed via the institution’s ethics channel and criminal lawsuits, alleged systematic transfers of confidential information to the consulting firm Análisis Ingenieros, co-owned by her partner, have been documented. The emails added to the cases—which, in their volume and level of confidential detail, resemble a kind of homegrown WikiLeaks—show an alleged pattern of internal collaboration in which the civil servant sent technical files, land valuations, reports on the Fuerteventura lighthouses and even editable drafts containing messages as explicit as «you can copy things from here too» or «in case it’s useful. Kisses.» This was reported by *Canarias 7*.
Auto-Tune or Capella
The administrative decision is based on the report issued by Salvador Capella, director of the Port of La Luz and Las Palmas, who concluded that there were no «actions from which rational indications could be inferred that a possible very serious disciplinary offense had been committed.» The ruling responds to a complaint filed by businessman Juan Luis Bethencourt Gallego, who accused the civil servant of allegedly favoring the commercial interests of her romantic partner, engineer Hubert Lang-Lenton Barrera, to the detriment of the public interest and by supplying confidential information from port files to the firm Análisis Ingenieros SL. *La Provincia* reported this in 2018.
Leak of competitors’ projects
The alleged institutional favoritism scheme went beyond mere assistance with public tenders. Complaints filed as early as 2019 revealed the alleged leaking of projects belonging to competing companies and private individuals seeking port land in strategic locations such as Arinaga and La Luz. Data on petroleum-product pipelines, environmental requirements and internal drafts signed by management ended up in the hands of the private consultancy before their official notification. This alleged breach of document custody not only compromised the interests of private operators, but also blew apart the competitive-transparency safeguards of the Archipelago’s largest port.
Slow progress in the disciplinary proceedings
This technical paralysis would benefit the defense’s timetable while the port authority’s senior management attempts to reorganize the investigation of the internal disciplinary proceedings. After the Board of Directors delegated to the president of the Port Authority, Beatriz Calzada, the authority to initiate proceedings, following the recusal of the port director—who is involved in the lawsuits filed by the civil servant herself—the administrative machinery is moving with exasperating slowness.
The result is a scenario of deferred impunity in which the documentary evidence concerning leaks of key files at the Port of Las Palmas remains stalled between courtrooms. The justice system’s inability to coordinate the resolution of the labor and criminal aspects not only delays the determination of individual responsibility, but also casts a profound shadow of doubt over the legal certainty and operational integrity of the Canary Islands’ port system.
The article The labor-law trap for Ibarra that is freezing the criminal case at the Port of Las Palmas in the “Leaks case” was first published on canarymaritime.com.
