Change of roles in Les Corts Valencianes. Everything indicated that the appearance of the director of the Valencian Anti-Fraud Agency (AVAF), Joan Llinares, to report on the investigations carried out into two possible cases of sexual harassment in the Agency and the opening of two disciplinary files, would end in a fight between Llinares and the PP (the party that had requested his explanations). However, in Les Corts, the script changed in a surprising way and the session ended with a tremendous clash between the director of the Agency and the PSPV.
Llinares even hinted that the socialists were behind a “smear” campaign against the AVAF – in which he also included the UGT union. The link was the former PSPV ombudsman Manolo Mata who, Llinares recalled, is the lawyer of the two workers who have been charged and, in addition, one of the lawyers in the Azud case, in which former PSPV officials are also involved.
The socialist deputy José Muñoz expressed his “indignation” at such “serious accusations” and expressed his concern about the fact that “an instrument as valuable as the Anti-Fraud Agency could fall into personalization” that harms it: “The Agency is not of a person but rather it is an asset that we must protect.
All this under the watchful eye of the PP, which had already shown its misgivings about the work of the director of the Agency, but which yesterday avoided entering into the debate and limited itself to observing how one of the parties that founded the Agency and the director who was appointed at the time of the Botànic, they attacked each other very harshly in a commission in the Valencian Parliament.
After what happened, the socialists did not believe Llinares’ words and recalled that it was the Botànic that defended tooth and nail the creation and work of an institution that the PP always viewed with a bad light. A few months before the mandate expires, the relationship between the current director of the Agency and the PSPV seems definitively broken.
The appearance began with Llinares explaining in detail the Agency’s actions to try to detect two possible cases of sexual harassment that were never reported as such. Thus, he pointed out that after the Conflict Resolution Unit concluded that there was no case of sexual harassment, he, as director of the Agency, signed the archiving resolution on October 16.
Regarding the opening of two files for two workers, Llinares argued its processing after discovering the breach of “duties of confidentiality” after confidential information extracted from two Agency accounts was leaked. “Confidentiality has not been respected and the Agency’s personnel have been defenseless. Insults and falsehoods have been spread to destroy the reputation of the staff. Perhaps the purpose was to destroy the Agency, but questioning the honorability of the official staff has exceeded all limits,” denounced Llinares. “You will appreciate why this happens, from my point of view it is related to the work that the agency does,” he added.
However, it was during the reply’s turn that everything exploded. “There is a moment when I think that the lawyer of the files is the same as the Azud case, of Jaime Febrer. And we have just presented expert reports by the Agency on Azud…”, he denounced.
The Antifraud director confirmed that he was talking about Mata, which prompted the words of PP deputy Fernando Pastor: “If everything I have heard today is true, the PSPV is a low-class gang.” A comment that further agitated the debate and that the socialists asked, without success, for it to be withdrawn.
But Llinares also charged against UGT. He explained that during these months he received a visit from a union official to ask him to archive the files and recalled that this same union “tried to put an end to the Agency when I was alone.”
For this reason, he assured that “the Agency is annoying. Their work is annoying, and instead of accepting the recommendations, they decide to discredit the staff in order to attack the judicial reports that we make.”
Some accusations to which the PSPV deputy José Muñoz did not remain silent in his last turn of reply: “I think he is completely wrong, the Anti-Fraud Agency does not belong to one person, it generates unfair doubts for the unions, the lawyer, the political parties… We are concerned with what happens in the agency, a valuable instrument that can fall into a certain personalization and that can deviate from the objectives for which it was created.”
A few words that denote the open trust gap between Antifraud and the PSPV, all in a context where it was, until now, the PP and Vox who doubted the continuity of the Agency.
