The former president of the Valencian Generalitat, Francisco Camps, and the former Minister of Justice, José María Michavila, in a file image.EFE
The Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office has decided to support the disqualification of one of the three magistrates who will be part of the court that will judge the former president of the Valencian Generalitat, Francisco Camps, for prevarication and fraud in the contracts of the regional administration to Orange Market for the fair of Tourism of 2009, in one of the pieces of
the Gürtel case.
Anti-Corruption thus joins the request of the popular prosecution and considers that the fact that Judge Joaquín Delgado, who was advisor to the Minister of Justice José María Michavila and General Director of Relations with the Administration of Justice during the mandate of Rafael Catalá, occupied two high positions in the Government of the PP can call into question his impartiality due to his "affinity" with the popular ones.
In addition, the brief, presented before the National Court, argues that not only did he hold those positions, but that his dismissal was a direct consequence of the motion of censure that removed Mariano Rajoy from the Government, precisely because of the Gürtel sentence in which the PP was convicted, as a legal entity, as a beneficiary of the "institutional corruption system" of the plot led by Francisco Correa.
In the case that will begin to be tried in January 2023, not only is Camps accused, but also twenty senior officials of the Administration of the Generalitat Valenciana and the Popular Party are prosecuted in the years 2004 to 2009. Among them is Francisco Camps, for which the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor asks for two and a half years in prison for allegedly influencing the autonomous government to award the contract for major events for the Fitur Tourism fair to the Orange Market company, a Valencian subsidiary of Francisco Correa's corporate network, ringleader of the corrupt network.
According to the Prosecutor's Office, Camps favored Orange Market to appease its managers "before the high debt" that the PP accumulated with the company, among other things, for the preparation of Popular Party events.
Now, the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office considers that Judge Delgado is not adequate to judge and sentence this part of
the Gürtel case
because Camps held various positions in the national and Valencian PP and this same party, which chose him to occupy high positions, was responsible for profit in the biggest cause of corruption that has affected the popular.
Anticorruption also wields the challenges presented and accepted in five other pieces in which the magistrates Enrique López, Concepción Espejel and Juan Pablo González were removed from the cases due to their affinity with the PP.
The decision of the Prosecutor's Office to support this challenge collides with Camps's own attempts to remove another magistrate José Antonio Mora, who will preside over the court after failing in his intention to remove magistrate José Ricardo de Prada who, finally, has changed his section and will not be part of the court.