A Camps counselor unloads Gürtel's hiring on a subordinate: "I didn't give a damn"

Alicia de Miguel, Minister of Social Welfare of Francisco Camps, shows a poster with the structure of her department, this Tuesday in the 'Gürtel case', on one of the monitors of the National Court.JJ Gálvez

Alicia de Miguel, Social Welfare Counselor for Francisco Camps in the Generalitat Valenciana, has pointed downwards with enormous insistence in the trial being held at the National Court on his alleged involvement (and that of the former regional president) in the Gürtel

.

This Tuesday, in the seventh session of the hearing, the former PP politician has discharged all responsibility for the contracting of the corrupt plot on her former chief of staff, Enrique Navarro, who already assured the court that she gave him instructions to take over the services of the companies of Francisco Correa, Pablo Crespo and Álvaro Pérez, alias

.

“To me, Mr. Álvaro Pérez did not give a damn.

I was not in charge of the acts”, stated the former high-ranking official of the Generalitat.

De Miguel thus throws balls out during his statement as a defendant.

"Navarro had all my confidence and he was autonomous in the acts because he had much more experience than me," the former regional councilor stressed about her former

right

"I did not participate in any contracting act, and I have never seen an invoice in my life," she added, to questions from the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor.

More information

Four defendants in the Camps trial distance themselves from the Gürtel plot

—But, if you had nothing to do with the hiring, in what capacity do you meet with Álvaro Pérez?

—The representative of the public ministry has then questioned.

"I didn't know him at all.

I received a lot of people because that was the counseling of people: businessmen, associations, all kinds of people... I received Álvaro Pérez like any other businessman,” the former counselor replied.

As De Miguel has defended himself this Tuesday, he put El Bigotes in contact with his chief of staff, and he ignored it.

“Navarro was responsible for organizing the events that I attended as

”, He has minimized her intervention.

But Pérez, Correa's man in the Valencian Community, and Navarro have offered a very different version.

According to both, she was a key piece in the plot.

This is how El Bigotes details it in a confession letter sent to the Court: “I had a good relationship with Alicia and dealt with her personally, as well as with Enrique Navarro and other workers from the council, to carry out the events and ensure my participation. of Orange Market, [a corrupt network company].

In this way we would not have competitors and the contracting procedures would also be reduced in time”.

Last week, Navarro specified that De Miguel told him that he had an "interest" in contracting with the Gürtel plot to "ingratiate himself" with the regional PP sector headed by Camps.

“I asked him why we were doing it with this man.

And Alicia said that Álvaro had a friendship with [Ricardo] Costa, [former general secretary of the Valencian PP], and closeness with Camps”, said the former chief of staff, before explaining that De Miguel, from the sector of the party close to Eduardo Zaplana [then faced with the one from Camps], feared that he could be left out of the Government in the next legislature.

"And this was a way, through Pérez, to ingratiate himself [...] It was to look good before Costa, and Costa would already transmit," added Navarro.

De Miguel has rejected these statements on Tuesday: “Navarro, when he testified as a witness, said that I did not know anything about these issues.

But when they charged him, he said that I was the one who decided everything.

And he didn't say that I had killed Manolete because they didn't ask him.

Navarro lies blatantly."

Enrique Navarro, during his statement in the trial, last Wednesday.

The investigating judge José de la Mata and the Prosecutor's Office maintain that Alicia de Miguel "chose" the company from the corrupt network, after "agreeing" with the leaders of the plot.

According to the summary, the counselor intervened personally "as an interlocutor" and as "the person who decided to carry out the events."

"He dealt personally with Álvaro Pérez and other personnel of his company about his organization and about the procedure that in each case was followed for his hiring, in order to ensure the participation of the aforementioned merchant in the awarding of the same, for his own benefit. , with the purpose of circumventing the public concurrence of other possible competitors and expediting the contracting processes, ”said the magistrate in the order to open the oral trial.

The judge added that the former counselor "intentionally generated two minor contracts in favor of Orange Market, issuing invoices on the same day (May 24, 2006) in favor of the same company and for amounts below the limit of 12,020.24 euros."

El Bigotes also recounted that the Ministry of Social Welfare hired them thanks to the intervention on his behalf by the former Valencian president: "These services were accepted on the recommendation of Paco Camps so that they awarded them to us."

De Miguel denies it.

—Are you aware or aware of having received any direct or indirect order or suggestion for you or your chief of staff to contract with Álvaro Pérez or his companies?

—Camps' lawyer asked the ex-counselor.

-Never.

Absolutely.

Never," she replied.

Along with Camps, another 25 people sit on the bench: among them, three former councilors of the popular governments of the Generalitat Valenciana (Alicia de Miguel, Luis Rosado and Manuel Cervera), for whom only disqualification penalties are requested for administrative prevarication .

None of the four former PP politicians has agreed with the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office, as 11 other defendants have done, including Enrique Navarro.

"I was never a friend of Álvaro Pérez"

David Serra, during his statement in the trial against Camps, this Tuesday.

After the interrogation of De Miguel, the turn of David Serra, former regional secretary of Sport and former deputy secretary general of the regional PP, has come.

Serra, who has already been sentenced to almost four years in prison in Gürtel's line of investigation into the irregular financing of the popular Valencians, has denied the irregularities on Tuesday: “I was never a friend of Álvaro Pérez;

neither he, mine.

I didn't trust him, I didn't trust him”.

"In the years that I was in the autonomous Administration, I never received any indication from Camps, nor from any member of the Valencian Government," he stressed.

The oral hearing will continue this Wednesday with the interrogations of more defendants: there are still nine.

According to the schedule provided by the Court, Camps will be the last to testify and will close this initial phase of the trial, before witnesses begin to file before the court.

The Prosecutor's Office requests two and a half years in prison for the former president for fraud and prevarication.

The leaders of the plot have pointed to the former head of the regional government as the route of entry of the corrupt network into the community.

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