Eduardo Zaplana's defense came across this morning with the determination of the court trying the Erial Case to continue with the case. The lawyer of the former president and former minister had requested, in the previous questions, that the evidence known as "the Syrian papers" or "roadmap" be annulled, documents that were found by chance in a home that had been property of Marcos Benavent's first lawyer, known as the "Money Junkie."
These papers were delivered by a Syrian citizen who found them by chance, and they allowed the investigation against Eduardo Zaplana to begin; against the former Valencian president José Luis Olivas and against thirteen other people who sit in the dock as of today. The prosecution charges the former minister with six crimes and requests 19 years in prison against him for allegedly collecting and laundering commissions from ITV and wind farm awards. He is accused of the crimes of criminal organization, money laundering, bribery, prevarication and document falsification.
In addition, the court has rejected another request from the former minister's lawyer: that the Chamber recuse itself so that the National Court can prosecute them. In both cases the Prosecutor's Office has opposed and the court has decided to continue with the oral hearing.
In the case of the "Syrian papers" Zaplana's lawyer has described as "pompous and almost ridiculous" the name of "road map" that the UCO of the Civil Guard made of them. These are three documents where, according to investigators, a possible collusion was glimpsed in the awarding of certain public concessions of the Wind Plan and the ITV in favor of companies linked to the Sedesa group, of the Cotino family clan (headed by the deceased former general director of the Police, former vice president of the Valencian Government and former president of Les Corts Valencianes, Juan Cotino), for which, according to the UCO of the Civil Guard, illicit commissions of 6.4 million were paid.
The documents were in the possession of the first lawyer of the former manager of the public company Imelsa Marcos Benavent because they had been given to him in 2012 by a person of Syrian origin named Imad, who said he had found them "abandoned" inside an envelope around 2007 in a home in which resided on a rental basis, whose owners were between 1998 and December 2006 Zaplana and his wife.
This Thursday, in the first session of the trial, Zaplana's lawyer considered it "aberrant" that one could enter a lawyer's office and seize documents in which "Zaplana does not appear." Already in the investigation phase, Campos tried to disassociate his client from those papers by requesting an expert DNA test that did not yield any results, that is, no remains were found in said papers.
The prosecutor has reminded the court that this same issue - the validity of the registration of the office of the former Benavent lawyer - has already been resolved by the Fifth Section of the Provincial Court of Valencia, in one of the first pieces of the Imelsa case that were prosecuted.
In this sense, he recalled that neither the lawyer in question nor his client expressed any complaint or theft of any document that affected his defense. Furthermore, he has pointed out that when Zaplana was arrested "similar papers were also seized from him, and it was the investigating judge who decided to investigate." "The Civil Guard was not satisfied with reporting on what was found, but rather informed the judge that the companies mentioned in those documents exist, that they are not a chimera," he added.
After listening to all these pronouncements, the president of the Chamber has announced that he does not accept the nullity of the aforementioned documents (evidence in this case) and has informed the parties that, since there is already a resolution on the merits of this matter, he will justify his decision in sentencing.
(((There will be an extension)))
