Vera townhall has voted to sue the ex-directors of Codeur for incompetence.
Codeur is the public utility company that runs the water system in Vera. It’s owned partially by Keymare (the builders that made such a mess of the coast round the water park) and mainly by the town of Vera.
Anyway, Vera says the old directors (appointed by the Keymare shareholders) ran the company “for the benefit of the shareholders and not the greater good of the town of Vera”.
In other words, 600,000 euros have been “misspent” and Vera wants to know what they did with the cash. Other irregularities: Francisco Vázquez, who used to be councillor for public works and a director of Codeur paid himself 100,000 euros a year after tax with a 300,000 payout upon severance of contract; Gabriel Sánchez of Keymare was on a similar contract. Neither of these two directors put these contracts before the board of directors, instead the two authorised the contract of the other.
Later on, Key Lanzarote (a subsidiary of KeyMare in Lanzarote) was given a loan of 149,000 euros by Codeur in exchange for an assurance against the assets of the company. The loan wasn’t repaid and the capital of the company was only 3,000 euros, meaning it wasn’t even worth Vera taking the company to court, as it had no other assets.
These naughty little acts were supposedly smiled upon by the old Mayor of Vera, Felix López, who instead of insisting that Codeur reinvest profits into the municipal water system allowed over 1,4 million euros to be taken out of the company in dividends by the private shareholders.
Juan de la Cruz Belmonte, actual councillor for infrastructure of Vera townhall, announced his intention to sue these ex-directors in the courts to attempt to reclaim parts of the wasted money, and also announced his intention to execute clauses to seize the reminder of Codeur shares that are in private hands, as he claims the contracts awarding the shares to KeyMare have been “more than breached”.