The Inspection considers a crime in the COAG case for exploitation of immigrant minors
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Rafael Hernandezagricultural businessman and president of the Coordinator of Farmers and Livestock Organizations of the Canary Islands (COAG-Canary Islands), allegedly ordered to create a false file to justify before the Provincial Labor and Social Security Inspection that the ten migrant minors who were found working on one of their farms did so because They were studying an agriculture course. Due to these facts, among others, the Inspection has appreciated the possible commission of a crime in the actions of Hernández, who He was reported to the Las Palmas Provincial Prosecutor’s Office along with three other people of your environment.
For this reason, the Inspection has suspended the administrative route of the investigation it was carrying out against Rafael Hernandezhis daughter Elisa Hernandez –director of the Tagoror juvenile center–, her husband Cristian Ruano –in charge of the Hernández estate–, Manuel Redondo –technical secretary of COAG– and Cathy Godoy –social worker Life Opportunities Association–. Now, this body must complete the file that they will subsequently send to the Prosecutor’s Office, if the Public Ministry does not first initiate investigation proceedings and request them. This procedure It has not occurred yet due to operational issues. within the Public Ministry.
Although Hernández has explained to the media that the minors belonging to the Tagoror center that the Inspection and the National Police found working on his potato farm on June 20, 2023, were taking an agriculture course, the complaint alleges to prove that They had not been included in that Agro-Canary program that he referred to.
On the contrary, presumably ordered to create a false file urgently adding these boys and spoke with a teacher to give them express classes for fewer hours and thus give the appearance of legality to an allegedly criminal action before the inspector.
It was “5 or 6 days”
This thesis was supported by the complainant before the Labor Inspection and the Prosecutor’s Office not only with his testimony and that of another worker, but with a multitude of Documentary evidence which he attached to his writing. These are, for example, WhatsApp conversations in which several migrants They admitted that they had gone to work to Hernández’s farms without having previously had any relationship with the courses.
One of them commented in these messages that 12 boys once went to work, so it could have obviously been a different day than the inspection. He also commented that It was “5 days 6 days because we had a routine that we changed often” and that he “paid them 25 euros per day.”
Another of the minors who was involved on the day of the inspection wrote in the messages provided that the day the “police came” he was working and that, after the inspection, “the following days we did not go out again” and that “A few days later we started agricultural training,” which would support the complaint that Hernández included them in the courses after the file was opened to give legality to this alleged irregular practice.
They also provided captures of another group of chat called ‘Menas Monitors’ in which those responsible for the Tagoror center directed by Hernández’s daughter, reported daily on the list of seven minors who were going to go to work on the lands of the accused -supposedly- on May 17 and 18, before the inspection itself, which was on the 20th.
Finally, in the complaint they transferred to the Inspection and Prosecutor’s Office two recordings of conversations in which the president of the COAG himself and his technical secretary, Manuel Redondo, acknowledged that minors who had not yet participated in the courses had been used to work and that Hernández asked the technicians to lie to the investigators. «Yes, yes… we built a story, but it wasn’t me»the accused even said in the audio to which this newspaper has had access. “You didn’t call me so we could lie?”the complainant asked him at the same meeting, to which Hernández replied: “Yes, yes.”
Courses without practices
Finally, the complaint states that the courses that Hernández said the migrant minors caught on his farm were taking They do not have internship hours on their resume.
According to the information offered by the SEPE platform, the Fertilizers and Fertilizers course included 20 total hours of which all were in person and would take place in a multipurpose classroom, while in the case of Means and products for pest control it rose to 25 hours, all theoretical. The Irrigation Techniques course was made up of 30 contact hours and the PRL course in the agricultural laborer position was 20.
All of them without specifying that they must carry out internships, and even less working with potatoes, which was what the ten migrants did when the Inspection arrived.
“Did you call so we could lie?” the complainant asked and Hernández responded: “Yes, yes… we built a story.”
In the conversations provided to the Labor Inspection and Prosecutor’s Office, Rafael Hernández is heard telling the complainant that they should “end this relationship” because “you don’t understand that you took Pedro Morales in two resignations, me in this one.” [..].
The technician asked him whether or not it was true that the person also responsible for the Opportunities of Life Association had called him “so that we could lie” to the inspector, to which the accused admitted that “yes, yes… we constructed a story, but no It was me […]. It is my responsibility, yes, and there are things that you see with a different orientation.
«The blockage – in their relationship – is such that we cannot continue like this. “Here it ends and that’s it,” Hernández told the coach before dismissing him alleging “lack of confidence in him” and “lack of performance at work” on September 13.
In another audio, the complainant is heard speaking with the technical secretary of COAG, Manuel Redondo. In the file you hear how the director of the farmers tells him that “the damage caused by one day, at a specific moment, by some boys that not Rafael but Cristian is with, they stay for three hours and an inspection comes, the damage to the association and “the hard work they are doing with the immigrants… it seemed to us that in the end we had to do something that I don’t like,” after being asked about the alleged false file that the COAG created to give the appearance of legality to this alleged exploitation. labor of migrant minors
“Putting it on the balance, it would not be fair for a project to collapse because of this and if they are going more times, the inspection will end up going and when they go, if that is the case, it cannot be defended,” Redondo added in this talk.
“If after the inspection it is no longer being done, then it is already a profit,” the technical secretary insisted in response to the complainant’s complaints.
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