The former deputy mayor of Valencia Alfonso Grau leaves his house after being arrested in the framework of Operation Azud, in May 2021. EUROPA PRESS TV (Europa Press)
The builder Jaime Febrer, one of the main investigated in the bribery plot in Valencian town halls dismantled in the Azud Operation, resorted to a convoluted subterfuge to supposedly give a luxury apartment to the one who was until 2015 vice mayor of Valencia and municipal factotum, the popular Alfonso Grau, according to the documents to which EL PAÍS has had access.
The businessman acquired for Grau in February 2004 —when the conservative president was already the right-hand man of the then mayor Rita Barberá— a central 150-meter house in the luxurious area of Plaza Porta de la Mar in Valencia.
And, to pay for the property, of 360,607 euros, he signed a private contract with the four sellers of the apartment, who promised in writing to give him the keys to the house and to make the operation public within a maximum period of a month and a half.
Three weeks later, the popular president sealed before a notary in Valencia the deed of sale of a property with the same cadastral reference and for an amount identical to that included in the private contract.
However, in this last document, Febrer no longer appeared as the man who acquired the property, but rather the then leader of the PP.
The builder had disappeared from a deed that ensured that the buyer (Grau) paid for the apartment before the notarial process.
Building in the Plaza Porta de la Mar in Valencia, where the apartment acquired by the builder Jaime Febrer is located, which was registered in March 2004 by the former deputy mayor of Valencia Alfonso Grau (PP).
Kike Taberner
"The selling party confesses to having received (360,607 euros) from the buying party before this act, in the corresponding proportion, for which a payment letter is granted and it is obliged to clean up according to law," the deed stated.
A document sealed on March 12, 2004 that did not refer to the previous private contract between the sellers and Febrer.
The agents of the Central Operative Unit (UCO) of the Civil Guard seized last year the private sales contract and the notarial deed during a search of the Grau apartment in Porta de la Mar square. Along with these writings, the investigators They also took a budget to furnish the dining room and the office of the house (47,663 euros) and a project to undertake a masonry reform on the alderman's floor (99,134) prepared by a contractor from the Valencia City Council, according to the summary.
The Azud plot reveals a typical scheme of municipal corruption from the years of boom the brick.
The genesis of this network lies in the role of businessmen such as Febrer, who supposedly showered municipal leaders with gifts —bottles of wine, luxury pens, exclusive suitcases, hams—, bribes in cash and bricks in exchange for millionaire awards to their company, Construcciones Valencia Constitución SL The Azud case accumulates five secret pieces and investigates the alleged crimes of prevarication, bribery, false documents, money laundering, influence peddling, illicit association and criminal group.
This newspaper has tried unsuccessfully to obtain the version of the four sellers of the property, who got rid of a property from an inheritance.
EL PAÍS has also not been able to know the opinion on the transaction of Febrer, the builder who supposedly treated the political mastermind of the Barberá mandates with a home in a privileged area of the city.
"He doesn't want to talk," says the businessman's lawyer, Manuel Mata.
Grau, 81, also avoids detailing the operation that allowed him to become the owner of his home in March 2004.
“I'm not going to say anything.
I bought the flat.
How can it be that you have documents that I do not have? Why are they filtering you? ”, He ditches by phone.
The Court of Instruction number 13 of Valencia, which is investigating the case, sent Grau to prison last year for alleged bribes that would add two million euros from this network that investigates how contractors from different municipalities of the Valencian Community bribed with more than seven million to politicians in exchange for awards between 1999 and 2013.
After spending almost six months in prison, the former deputy mayor is on provisional release.
And he faces other fronts in court.
Grau is being investigated for the so-called
Imelsa case,
which investigates the alleged financing of the Valencian PP municipal campaigns of 2007 and 2011.
In addition, the former leader was sentenced in 2019 to four years in prison for accepting luxury watches valued at 25,000 euros from a Consistory contractor, exchanging them for more expensive ones and paying the difference.
The Supreme, however, freed him from prison last May by acquitting him of the crime of money laundering and reducing his sentence to nine months for this matter, baptized as
the Watches case
.
Febrer, who is free with charges, spent five months last year in the Valencian prison of Picassent for this case.
Along with Grau, the Civil Guard has arrested more than 20 people for their alleged connection to the bribery plot.
The list of those investigated includes a daughter of the former deputy mayor of Valencia;
the former deputy delegate of the Government Rafael Rubio (PSPV);
the former head of the legal services of the public company Divalterra, José Luis Vera;
and the popular ex-mayor of Xixona Rosá María Verdú, who allegedly collected half a million euros through a shell company for benefiting the network in an urban development operation to build a housing development with a golf course.
The lawyer José María Corbín, married to a sister of Barberá and who served as her chief of staff, was another key player in the structure.
The lawyer invoiced up to 602,156 euros in fictitious contracts (80% of his income) to companies that later received contracts from the Valencia City Council.
Corbín was, in the opinion of the investigators, the achiever of the plot.
50% off
Exclusive content for subscribers
read without limits
subscribe
I'm already a subscriber