The former minister and former president of the Generalitat with the PP Eduardo Zaplana will sit on the dock this Thursday to face the first session of the Erial case trial without the presence of his main lawyer, former prosecutor Daniel Campos, who is suffering from a heart ailment.
The Fourth Section of the Valencia Court has recently decided to maintain the scheduled date for the start of this trial, although it is very likely that in this first session a new postponement or suspension of the trial will be formally requested, given the voluminous nature of the case, the difficulty that it entails for a new lawyer to be instructed in it and the defenselessness that this could mean for the main accused.
This macro-cause already suffered a postponement on January 9 due to the resignation of the anti-corruption prosecutor, and it was then decided to postpone it until February 1. The calendar includes a total of 40 sessions and the appearance of more than 200 witnesses.
In the Erial case, whose investigation ended last October, twenty people are being investigated, including the former presidents of the Generalitat Eduardo Zaplana and José Luis Olivas and the family of the deceased former president of Les Corts Valencianes, former vice president of the Valencian Government and former director General of the Police, Juan Cotino, as well as collaborators of the former president and former minister and several businessmen.
The case faces its final phase almost six years after the arrest of Zaplana (on May 22, 2018), who was in prison until February 7, 2019, although he remained admitted to La Fe due to an oncological disease since February 18. December 2018 to February 11, 2019.
The Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office demands a 19-year prison sentence for Zaplana as the person most responsible for an alleged plot of illicit commissions and money laundering that began with the privatization of the Valencian ITV stations.
In its indictment, the Public Ministry requests the confiscation of 20.6 million euros - of which 6.7 have already been transferred to the asset recovery office ORGA -, an amount that was allegedly appropriated by both Zaplana and fourteen others prosecuted, in an operation of bribes that were diverted to tax havens.
Together with Zaplana, the prosecutor directs his accusation against his collaborators Joaquín Barceló (for whom he asks for 8 years), Francisco Grau (8), Juan Francisco García (14), Mitsouko Henríquez (8); the businessmen Vicente and José Cotino (14); and former president José Luis Olivas (6).
Also against Saturnino and Elvira Suances (5), Francisco Pérez López (7), Pedro Romero (5), Robert Bataouche (5), Ángel Salas (5) and Carlos Rodríguez (5), and the companies Costera del Glorio, Medlevante, Gesdesarrollos Integrales, Turnis Sylvatica and Double Figures. The alleged crimes that the prosecutor cites in his classification are criminal organization, money laundering, bribery, prevarication and document falsification.
The origin of the illicit funds that Zaplana supposedly managed is in the contests that the Generalitat launched to privatize the ITV and the concessions of wind farms, which were designed with "subjective conditions" so that certain companies would win the tenders "to the detriment of other competitors", always according to the prosecutor. And for this to be possible, the necessary conditions were created in the "highest level political bodies."
For this first rigging, the prosecutor believes that Zaplana agreed with the deceased Juan Cotino, who was general director of the Police, among other positions, since several companies controlled by his relatives were awarded in both tenders (ITV and wind farms).
In fact, Vicente and José Cotino, through their companies Sedesa and Asedes, are those whom Anticorrupción points out as responsible for the creation of the corporate structure necessary in Spain and Luxembourg to be awarded the contracts and also, according to the prosecutor, to channel bribes. for 6.4 and 2.18 million euros.
These funds allegedly went to a company owned by Zaplana that was managed by Beatriz García Paesa - Francisco Paesa's niece - first and by the Uruguayan lawyer Fernando Belhot later. The latter has collaborated with the Prosecutor's Office and has facilitated the recovery of funds that supposedly come from the aforementioned corruption.
The Cotinos took over the ITVs of Castellón, Vila-Real and Vinaròs for 5.8 million euros in 2002 and two years later they sold their stake for 43 million. With the benefits obtained in this supposedly rigged award, Vicente, José and Juan Cotino "began to use the corporate structures designed with the purpose of transferring the agreed bribes to the organization led by Eduardo Zaplana," maintains the prosecutor.
If these operations are added to the profits obtained from the sale of shares in the public company Proyectos Eólicos Valencianos, also apparently obtained via rigged concessions, the Cotino clan obtained a total of 86.5 million euros, which in the opinion of Anticorruption "justifies the high amount of commissions paid."
