The trial of the former president of the Generalitat Valenciana, former Minister of Labor and leader of the PP Eduardo Zaplana, scheduled to begin this Thursday in the court of Valencia, has been postponed due to the recovery of his lawyer, who had to undergo surgery after a heart attack. The court has set March 21 as the date for the resumption of sessions, which will in principle last about five months, in which it will try to solve the alleged crimes of subterfuge, forgery, bribery, criminal organization and money laundering.
The so-called Erial case was about the alleged collection of illegal commissions after the award of the wind farms and the vehicle inspection centers (ITV). The public prosecutor's office is seeking prison sentences of between 5 and 19 years for Aznar's former minister.
In addition to Zaplana, there are 14 other people on the bench, including his successor, former president of the Generalitat Valenciana José Luis Olivas, who, according to allegations, also accepted bribes from the car dealerships, the Cotino brothers' group of companies. . For this reason, and despite the fact that the court was aware of the status of the former minister's defense, the court decided to maintain this Thursday's appointment so that a new start date could be set with the involvement of all lawyers.
According to the investigation, the plan created to receive and launder the commissions moved 20.6 million euros. In its report, the public prosecutor's office points out that after the arbitration awards, the Cotino group of companies sold shares in the car dealerships, which brought it 86.5 million euros, “which justifies the high level of commissions”.
One of the main components of the indictment represented by the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office is the testimony of one of Eduardo Zaplana's alleged front men, Fernando Belhot, the Uruguayan lawyer who was responsible for the “fiscal optimization” of the assets of the network, which he said was not active and he He said he always knew that the former regional president, with whom he met several times a year, was behind the operation. Belhot delivered 6.7 million euros to the Asset Recovery Agency (ORGA), which is allegedly part of the 20 million that Anti-Corruption claims were fraudulently obtained.
The Erial case, which had its origins in a document purporting to describe the procedures for obtaining the ITV concessions and the wind farms with the amounts that bidders had to pay to win the awards, came to a head in May 2018 , with the arrest of the popular leader, for whom the judge ordered temporary imprisonment. The former regional president spent almost nine months in prison, part of it in the hospital, because he was suffering from leukemia. After several requests for bail, the court agreed to grant him freedom in February 2019 when it found that there was no longer a risk of escape or destruction of evidence. Eduardo Zaplana has maintained his innocence from the first moment and his defense has tried every means possible to ensure that the case does not go to trial.
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