The citizen of Syrian origin who accidentally found the papers that incriminate the former president of the Generalitat and former minister Eduardo Zaplana in an alleged plot of illicit awarding of public contracts has confirmed this Wednesday before the judge the way in which he found them and how he sent them to the former manager of Imelsa and self-proclaimed 'money junkie', Marcos Benavent.
The accusation against Zaplana in the Erial case trial, regarding alleged “bites” in the awards of the Valencian ITV and the wind farms, has one of its essential pillars in the known as “Syrian papers”, documents that were hidden and folded in a hole in the wall next to a safe.
In them, according to the 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, formed by the former director general of the Police. and former president of Les Corts Valencianes, Juan Cotino, and his nephews.
The documents were found by the aforementioned Syrian businessman, named Imad, summoned this Wednesday as a witness, in the home where he was a tenant in Valencia between 2008 and 2015, which Eduardo Zaplana had previously occupied.
The papers, according to the testimony of this witness, were delivered to the former manager of the public company Imelsa Marcos Benavent, who kept them because he observed interesting data in them.
After searching the office of Benavent's first lawyer, on November 11, 2015, the UCO of the Civil Guard informed the judge about the "chance finding of some relevant documents", and a day later the anti-corruption prosecutor requested the opening of a separate piece .
Asked this Wednesday by the prosecutor, Imad explained that, as head of the Arab community in Valencia, he had contact with Benavent. “I told him that he had found those documents, he asked me for them and I gave them to him. “I didn’t know who had previously occupied the house.”
To questions from Zaplana's lawyer, he added that he found them after months residing in the house, specifically in a hole that opened in the wall behind the door to the main room. In that space there was a safe, but next to it there was a small space where the papers were.
This lawyer has insisted on asking what was strange about that documentation or why he did not hand it over to the Police. The witness explained that they seemed important to him because "they apparently referred to wind farms... and they were next to the safe."
He has also indicated that he used to have contact with police officers but “never with the CNI, at least they did not identify themselves as such.”
These documents were the subject of a DNA analysis by Zaplana's defense to find out if they contained remains of the former minister, but the test was unsuccessful because no biological remains were found in any of the papers.
