The magistrates of the fifth section consider “sufficient” to support the opening of oral proceedings because “there are indications of criminality”
The fifth section of the Valencia Court endorses the instruction carried out by the Investigating Court 8 of Valencia and the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office in the wasteland case and, at reject the latest appeals filed by half a dozen defendantspaves the opening of oral proceedings against former minister Eduardo Zaplana, former president of the Generalitat, José Luis Olivas, and eighteen more people.
In a car communicated this Monday to the parties, advanced by Las Provincias, the magistrates reject the appeals against the car that finalized the investigation because they consider “sufficient” to support the opening of oral proceedings the evidence collected by the magistrate and the Anticorruption Prosecutor and that “there are indications of criminality” for the Valencia Court to judge the twenty defendants.
In fact, the magistrate considered in her decision appealed and now ratified that “there are indications that we are dealing with an organization made up of people who, some of them taking advantage of the political positions they held at the time of the events, or who had held over several years, together with existing companies or created expressly, facilitated obtaining public contracts, obtaining economic benefits for all parties -some to a greater extent than others- (…) which were later the object of money laundering and other crimes”.
In the order notified to the parties today, the magistrates of the fifth section respond to Zaplana that the annulments that he raises in the case “must be raised in the oral trial order.” The former minister intended, among other arguments, to invalidate the origin of the investigation based on the route sheet found by a Syrian citizen in his former home and that he handed over to Marcos Benavent, and that the investigators found in the office of the first lawyer known as money junkie Zaplana has also tried, unsuccessfully, to get Benavent and former commissioner Villarejo to testify in the presence of the defenses before the Investigating Court 8. “It is not possible to understand what extremes of vital importance can be accredited with the same [diligencias]being more than enough the diligences carried out to agree on the pronouncement “of the magistrate that opens the door to the opening of the oral trial”.
The judicial investigation, now completed, was baptized by the Central Operative Unit (UCO) of the Civil Guard as Erial, a metaphor for the fleeced administration after years of alleged bribery charges by Eduardo Zaplana and his close circle of collaborators in exchange for awards in the Wind Plan and technical vehicle inspections (ITV). Those responsible for this macro-cause of corruption, the Investigating Court 8 of Valencia and the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office together with the UCO, calculate that in this plot with international ramifications more than twenty million euros were mobilized. Of this amount, justice has managed to recover 6,734,026.1 euros. A money that has been deposited since 2019 in the account of the Investigating Court 8, after the confession of the alleged Uruguayan figurehead of Zaplana, Fernando Belhot, who voluntarily entered this amount that, supposedly, the former Minister of Labor had given him, to make investments.
The Anti-Corruption Prosecutor requests 19 years in prison against the former president of the Generalitat, Eduardo Zaplana, and for the collection of commissions in the award of the Technical Inspections of Vehicles (ITV) and the Wind Plan. An illicit activity that the Public Ministry specifies in the commission of the alleged crimes of a criminal group, money laundering, bribery, false commercial documents and administrative prevarication. Along with Zaplana, the former president of the Generalitat and Zaplana’s successor, José Luis Olivas, as well as the brothers Vicente and Juan Cotino Escrivá, are also accused by the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office. The case is no longer being followed against the former president of the Corts, Juan Cotino, and uncle of the two businessmen, after his death from covid-19 when he was being tried in the Gürtel room during the pope’s visit.