The defense of the businessman convicted in the Gürtel Álvaro Pérez case, the Bigotes, has considered “striking” the “effort” of the former president of the Generalitat Francisco Camps when denying that he had a “friendly relationship” with him that, in his opinion, has been “proven” by various testimonies.
This Tuesday, the National Court resumed the trial of more than twenty defendants for allegedly irregular awards to the Gürtel plot between 2004 and 2009, including Camps, who faces a request from the Prosecutor's Office for one year in prison and six years of disqualification. for influence peddling in competition with prevarication.
If yesterday the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office suggested evaluating as a "contraindication" the "intensity" with which Camps had denied his "proximity" and "closeness" to Bigotes, this Tuesday the businessman's own defense has listed the witnesses and defendants who have pointed out in the trial the existence of said relationship.
The alleged friendship between the two is an important point in the procedure while the Prosecutor's Office maintains that Camps was “patient zero” who offered Bigotes to install a company in the Gürtel plot in the Valencian Community in 2004, where he left “ “hiring naturally” to “ingratiate” the president, as he stated in his final report on Monday.
“How is a person who is working in Madrid in 2003 going to go to Valencia, move his entire family and change his life if he does not have a solid and secure job?”, Pérez's lawyer, Gustavo Galán, asked. in line with the thesis of the Prosecutor's Office.
The lawyer, who also defends the former Gürtel worker Felisa Jordán, has also highlighted the collaboration that this accused has been carrying out since the beginning of the case and has confirmed the “commitment” to the recognition of facts of his two clients, who form part of the dozen defendants who reached an agreement with Anticorruption.
Behind him, the defense of the former general director of Institutional Promotion Dora Ibars has reiterated the absence of evidence to condemn her for prevarication because, she has stressed, she had no jurisdiction to hire the Gürtel plot.
According to the Prosecutor's Office, Camps would have influenced Ibars to award the Gürtel plot the installation of an exhibitor at the Fitur fair in 2009, a thesis with which the accused's lawyer has deeply disagreed because, he said, “there is no only indication” nor that he hired, “because he couldn't”, “nor that he gave in to pressure from Camps because he never spoke to Camps”.
The lawyer has insisted that Ibars had "no credit or competence" to hire, "nor the power to impose anything on anyone", and he never met with the former president of the Generalitat, and has indicated that his work at the Fitur fair was limited to “coordinate”.
