Camps and Griñán: the future of two former regional presidents marks the judicial agenda for 2023

Francisco Camps, former regional president, at the PP national convention held in October 2021 in Valencia. Manuel Bruque (EFE)

Corruption in the autonomous institutions will nourish the judicial agenda in 2023.

A long list of former senior officials from Madrid, Catalonia, Andalusia and the Valencian Community will be placed under the magnifying glass of the Spanish courts, which must thoroughly study the alleged irregularities they committed from their posts.

The year starts with a long-awaited appointment: Francisco Camps, the popular baron who reached the top of the Valencian Generalitat and the regional PP, sits on the bench of the National Court accused of corruption in the

.

Meanwhile, the PSOE is still very pending the imprisonment of José Antonio Griñán, former president of the Andalusian Junta and the socialist party, after the Supreme Court confirmed his six-year prison sentence for the

.

Camps against the Prosecutor's Office.

All Camps' maneuvers to avoid his trial have fallen on deaf ears —he challenged members of the court, tried to paralyze the start of the hearing by taking his case to the Court of Justice of the European Union, complained to the UN and attacked the judge instructor-.

So as of this January 23, if there is no last-minute change of date, the former Valencian president will finally face the accusation of prevarication and fraud attributed to him by the Prosecutor's Office, which asks for two and a half years in prison for him. .

According to the investigation, the former leader of the PP intervened to irregularly award a contract in 2009 to the companies of the Gürtel plot and thus favor, "as he had been doing since 2005", the network of Francisco Correa, who had nested in the party .

The former leader of the PP, who has tried to return to the front line of politics,

He rejects the accusations and attributes them to a political manhunt.

He will be accompanied on the bench by another 27 defendants, including three former advisers of the popular governments.

Borràs plays it (and Junts).

The independence party has linked part of its future to that of its current president, Laura Borràs, suspended as president of Parliament after being prosecuted for corruption.

With the secessionist leader determined to present herself as the victim of a political conspiracy —“There was a rush, a great rush to step aside to see if I was leaving.

Well, I'm not leaving and I won't leave”, he said in an interview, the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia will host the start of the trial against her in February, just three months before the municipal elections where the formation is playing part of its power .

The Prosecutor's Office requests six years in prison, 21 years of disqualification and a fine of 144,000 euros for Borràs for allegedly splitting a public contract to favor a friend of hers, when she directed the Institució de les Lletres Catalanes, between 2013 and 2018.

The main evidence against him is some very explicit emails between the two of them, in which she supposedly explains to him how to carry out the division.

She denies that they are hers.

The president of Junts and suspended president of the Parliament of Catalonia, Laura Borràs, this December, in Barcelona.David Zorrakino (Europa Press)

Review of the Junqueras judgment and the Puigdemont euro-order.

The Prosecutor's Office has already warned that the reform of the Criminal Code to modify embezzlement will cause dozens of revisions of sentences for those convicted of this crime.

Among them, predictably, that of the former Catalan vice president Oriol Junqueras and the other three former councilors whom the Supreme Court sentenced for embezzling public money to organize the illegal independence referendum on 1-O.

The Criminal Chamber will review the sentence ex officio in the coming weeks to decide how the changes in embezzlement and the elimination of sedition affect it, the crime for which nine pro-independence leaders were convicted.

In addition, the Supreme Court will also have to modify the prosecution and the European and international arrest warrants issued against the former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont, the general secretary of ERC, Marta Rovira,

and the rest of the fugitives from Spanish justice.

The Eurowarrants are now suspended pending the response of the European justice to a preliminary question sent by the investigator of the case of the

, Pablo Llarena, but the magistrate must move to adapt his actions to the new legislation without waiting for the response of the community court.

Another trial to the

Catalonia will live in March another chapter of the judicialization of the secessionist challenge, which concluded with the illegal referendum of October 1, 2017 and the unilateral declaration of independence.

The Superior Court of Justice has designated the 14th, 15th and 16th of this month for the holding of the oral hearing against the four members of the parliamentary committee (Anna Simó, Lluís María Corominas, Ramona Barrufet and Lluís Guinó) accused of disobedience for processing the parliamentary initiatives that facilitated the

.

They were sentenced in 2020, but the Supreme Court ordered a repeat trial last November due to the lack of impartiality of two magistrates.

Griñán's entry into prison and his request for pardon.

In Andalusia, the imprisonment of former President José Antonio Griñán and six former senior officials of the Board convicted of embezzlement in the political piece of

will mark the agenda (former counselor Carmen Martínez Aguado already did so a few days ago).

After the Court of Seville rejected in November to suspend the execution of the sentence of the Supreme Court, the entry into prison will be the great milestone in a macro-cause with several pieces whose trials will be held throughout 2023. Griñán has alleged that his Imprisonment can have a negative impact on the development and treatment of the serious illness he suffers from.

The case maintains its enormous volume and already accumulates 46 pieces submitted to the Court pending trial, 93 pieces in investigation, and only six trials held so far for the public aid granted by the Board between 2001 and 2009. At the same time, the Government It has yet to decide on the pardon request of the former Andalusian president and the rest of the defendants sentenced to prison.

Previously, the Prosecutor's Office and the Supreme Court must rule in favor or against the measure of grace.

The former socialist presidents of the Junta de Andalucía, Manuel Chaves and José Antonio Griñán, at the Seville Court in 2018.Jose Manuel Vidal (EFE)

Corruption in the PP of Madrid.

The regional and municipal election campaign will be marked in Madrid by the beginning of the first trial of

.

According to the calendar of the National Court, as of May 24 —the elections are held on the 28th of that month—, the hearing begins for the purchase by Canal de Isabel II of 75% of the Colombian company Inassa in 2001, an operation that had an overprice of up to 35.4 million euros, according to the Prosecutor's Office.

This investigation plunges into the bowels of the corruption of the PP of Madrid and the Community, governed by the popular for almost 30 years.

Among the people who will sit on the bench are Pedro Calvo and Juan Bravo, regional councilors during the governments of Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón;

and Arturo Canalda, former president of the Madrid Chamber of Accounts.

Francisco Nicolás Gómez Iglesias, at the Provincial Court of Madrid, on October 25. EDUARDO PARRA (Europa Press)

Little Nicolás, back on the bench.

The long judicial Via Crucis of Francisco Nicolás Gómez Iglesias, alias

, contemplates a new stop this 2023. The Provincial Court of Madrid has set as of February 6 the fifth and last trial scheduled against the twenty-something, who already accumulates three sentences of prison: in total, he accumulates sentences of eight years and two months in prison for crimes such as usurpation of functions and documentary falsification, which he is now trying to overthrow in the Supreme Court to avoid his imprisonment.

In the case that remains to be prosecuted, the Prosecutor's Office asks him for another nine years and nine months in prison for creating a criminal network to obtain confidential information from police databases.

With information from

.

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