The former president of the Valencia Provincial Council and former mayor of XÃ tiva with the PP, Alfonso Rus, has denied having mediated either with the Provincial Council officials or with any businessman for the award of the telephone attention services (‘call center’) of the provincial corporation.
The Fifth Section of the Provincial Court of Valencia judges Rus and six other people for crimes of influence peddling, prevarication, embezzlement, fraud, document falsification and money laundering in relation to the alleged irregularities detected in the awarding and provision of a service Imelsa telephone number between 2013 and 2016.
Next to Rus, the former manager of Imelsa Marcos Benavent – the self-styled “money junkie” – sits in the dock, his ex-father-in-law, Mariano López, two officials from the Provincial Council and two relatives.
The hearing began with a slight delay due to the traffic problems that several defendants have apparently found to reach Valencia, and Rus’ statement began at 10:30, instead of 10, as planned.
Rus, who has only responded to questions from his lawyer, Emilio Pérez, and from the court, has explained that the management assignments to the public company Imelsa were common in the provincial Corporation, to “gain agility in the hiring of personnel”.
“In 2009, a management request was made to Imelsa for the matter of collection and cadastre and the need to collect 180,000 receipts from the waste consortium arose. They spoke with me to say that more personnel were needed for the collection, but the Treasury then prohibited hiring more staff,” explained Rus.
According to the former president of the Diputación, it was the deputy José Manuel Haro who proposed entrusting the management of these charges to Imelsa, and “since it was a receipt for waste but not for garbage collection, there had to be someone to explain it, someone who take the phone calls.”
“The PSPV, CompromÃs and the PP voted in favor of this management task, all the deputies except one (IU)”, stressed Rus, who has insisted that he did not carry out any type of mediation with the official who directed that contest nor with Mariano López, former father-in-law of Marcos Benavent -then manager of Imelsa- to whom the Civil Guard attributes the collection of commissions.
Rus has insisted that he did not know anyone from the firm Servimun, the winner of the call center. “Sometimes he knew the people in charge of big companies, but this was 280,000 euros a year out of a budget of 500 million. It’s like taking a free kick from defense.”
He has admitted that he knew the complaints about the operation of the ‘call center’ service. “They told me that some 11,000 calls had remained unanswered, I spoke with the responsible deputy and he told me that it was normal, that the switchboard was blocked, that it was the first year and that there would be no problems later.”
For his part, the businessman and former father-in-law of Marcos Benavent, Mariano López, has copied Rus’s strategy by responding only to his lawyer, David González, and has explained that he was the owner of a graphic arts company and president of the businessmen of the central regions partner with others, but in no case with Servimun.
“My relationship with Rus was purely institutional,” Lopez, who has also denied being affiliated with the PP, has insisted.
In this sense, he has justified the charges he received from Servimun -more than 150,000 euros- as “external advisory” services. “It is true that I received from Servimun, but not because of the award, but in exchange for jobs.”
Regarding the audios that Benavent recorded for years and that gave rise to this cause, López has reiterated that he found them on a hard drive that was owned by his ex-son-in-law in the family chalet where the self-styled ‘money junkie’ was residing with his daughter.
That hard drive stayed in the house after the separation of Benavent and his daughter because “my daughter put the junk on the door” and among all the properties he did not include that device.
As he assured as a witness in the previous trial, López has said that the hard drive failed and began to save files, and that was how he discovered the audios.
“I knew, because he told me, that he was recording people. I took it for granted that there were scams. The computer was mine, but the external drive was not. I did not ask Marcos for permission to take those audios,” Mariano López has admitted.
Asked for the reasons why the existence of that hard drive is not detailed in the case, this defendant has insisted that he explained the entire process of obtaining the audios to both the Prosecutor’s Office and the Civil Guard. “Nobody asked me to contribute it, on the contrary, they told me to forget about it.”
Subsequently, Mariano López met with the IU leader and current Minister of Participation, Rosa Pérez Garijo, and showed her those audios, with which he intended to support his accusations of corruption with respect to Marcos Benavent.
“I took the flash drive -with the audios- so that they could listen to it, not to deliver it. But Rosa Pérez’s adviser put it on his computer,” he added.
Likewise, López has admitted that he wanted to “harm” Benavent with the dissemination of those audios that he found on the hard drive.
He has also said that he was in possession of it at the time the audios were delivered to the Prosecutor’s Office, a statement that has led to the request of the defenses to point out the contradictions with respect to what was declared in the previous trial, where he said -as a witness- that he had destroyed that disk.
The prosecutor has opposed this request and the Chamber has considered it inappropriate, so it has not been accepted.
Likewise, the prosecutor has asked the Chamber to reproduce the statement of Mariano López in the investigation phase, specifically in relation to the statements he made about his relationship with Servimun and his collections from this company, since he considers them totally contradictory with what was explained this Tuesday in the trial.
The defendant has said that he did not charge anything from Servimun for the award of the ‘call center’, but has clarified that he did later.
