This Thursday, at 10 in the morning, the trial for the so-called Erial Case will begin in the fourth section of the Valencia Court, whose main defendant is Eduardo Zaplana, former president of the Generalitat Valenciana and former minister of José María Aznar’s executive. . This is an oral hearing in which an autopsy will be carried out, through evidence and witnesses, at a time, at an era, in which the Valencian PP laid the foundations for a model of management of public resources, and complicity between administrators and private companies, which allowed this party a hegemony that lasted 20 years, but which has been plagued by cases of corruption.
The oral hearing of the Erial case will allow us to dissect in great detail not only the operation that the prosecution details in its qualification, with the participation of front men, tax havens, offshore companies and close complicities both in politics and in the company, but also a institutional system that subsequently conditioned the executives of José Luís Olivas, Francisco Camps and Alberto Fabra. Journalist Francesc Arabí, author of two books on the case, described it as a “regime.” One fact: another of the accused in this case is the former Valencian president, José Luís Olivas, accused of having collected a bribe of 580,000 euros.
Whatever the sentence, this trial will be a good opportunity to delve into a period in which political and institutional practices were forged that, years later, would lead to the disappearance of “the entire” Valencian financial system (Bancaja, Banco de València and CAM), in the closure of Channel 9, in the debt of the Valencian administration and in the emergence of corruption cases that would end up deteriorating the image of Valencians.
Eduardo Zaplana, who has managed to escape so far from all the legal cases he has faced, faces a request for a sentence from the prosecutor of 19 years in prison. He is accused of having collected and laundered bribes (with purchases of apartments, plots or vehicles) worth more than 20 million euros in ITV and wind farm awards when he was president, in 1997. He is suspected of having committed the crimes of criminal organization, money laundering, bribery, prevarication and document falsification. Along with the former president, in addition to José Luis Olivas, there will be close collaborators such as Joaquín Barceló (whom they ask for 8 years), Francisco Grau (8), Juan Francisco García (14) or Mitsouko Henríquez (8). Zaplana, who suffers from leukemia, has always defended his innocence.
The origin of the illicit funds that Zaplana supposedly managed is in the contests that the Generalitat launched to privatize the ITV and in the concessions of wind farms, which were designed with “subjective conditions” so that certain companies won the tenders “to the detriment from other competitors”, always according to the prosecutor. One of the beneficiaries was the family of the deceased Juan Cotino. And for this to be possible, the necessary conditions were created in the “highest level political bodies.”
The former minister was arrested on May 22, 2018. The origin of the Erial case is found in five typewritten sheets that were found by a Syrian citizen who had rented a home that had been owned by Zaplana. This citizen gave these sheets, full of deletions, to Marcos Benavent, known as the “money junkie” and made them available to justice during his “repentant” days. On these sheets is drawn the methodology that was used to obtain the bites of the ITV concessions and wind farms. Even with the amounts that bidders had to pay in bribes to obtain these awards.
In the first investigation, the prosecutor believes that Zaplana agreed with the deceased Juan Cotino, who was general director of the Police and former Valencian councilor, among other charges, since several companies controlled by his relatives were awarded in both tenders (ITV and parks wind). In fact, Vicente and José Cotino, nephews of the deceased, through their companies Sedesa and Asedes, are those whom Anticorruption 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 of 6.4 and 2.18 million euros.
These funds allegedly went to a company owned by Zaplana that was managed first by Beatriz García Paesa – niece of Francisco Paesa – and later by the Uruguayan lawyer Fernando Belhot. 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.”
Zaplana did not formally appear in these companies. “In the creation and management of the companies, the participation of Eduardo Zaplana remains hidden, who does not formally appear in the records of any of the companies, although he is present in the meetings that shape their constitution and in the decisions that are made. “, says the prosecutor for whom, according to the investigation, all indications point to the fact that the popular leader was the one who directed the network and who benefited from the bites.
The oral hearing is scheduled for 30 sessions. Eduardo Zaplana will testify, according to this program, on February 8. His testimony will be fundamental in the case, as well as that of Fernando Belhot, the Uruguayan lawyer who replaced Paesa and who was in charge of the “fiscal optimization” of the network’s assets.
