Setback to Camps: the Court rejects the attempt to discredit a witness who pointed to him in the Gürtel trial

Francisco Camps, former president of the Generalitat Valenciana, arrives at the National Court on March 8. FERNANDO VILLAR (EFE)

The National Court has inflicted a new setback on Francisco Camps, who has been on trial since January for his alleged involvement in the

.

The court has rejected this Wednesday the attempt of the former Valencian president to take legal action against one of the witnesses who testified against him in the oral hearing.

"There is no place", the magistrates respond, after the request of the former leader of the PP to deduce testimony against Elvira Ramos, an employee of the Generalitat Valenciana who explained last week that Álvaro Pérez, alias El

and a man behind the plot in the community, he regularly "went in and out" of the offices of senior officials of the regional administration.

Ramos also confirmed that, "in his opinion", there was "pressure" from Camps himself to contract with Orange Market, the corrupt network company in Valencia.

More information

A worker from the Generalitat Valenciana affirms that El Bigotes "went in and out" of the offices of senior officials

The testimony of the worker of the Generalitat felt very badly for the former president's defense the same day of his statement.

In her question time, Francisco Camps' lawyer even yelled at the witness, which caused the court to call her to calm down and ask her to moderate her tone.

That anger was translated only 24 hours later in a letter where he accused her of "misrepresenting the truth", and asked the National Court to "deduce testimony from her statement in order to file a lawsuit against her for the crime of false testimony".

An initiative that the court has rejected just five days later, "without prejudice to the assessment" that the judges make of the words of Ramos in the sentence that they hand down when the time comes.

The affirmations of the regional employee burst into the Camps trial with force.

Ramos was not just another worker.

She became the secretary and kept the agenda of Salvadora Ibars, former general director of Institutional Promotion.

A key piece.

According to the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office, the former Valencian president "verbally gave Ibars instructions" to award Orange Market the "work related to the assembly of the Major Projects

" at the Fitur 2009 tourism fair. For this maneuver, the public ministry has requested that the ex-leader of the PP be sentenced to two and a half years in jail.

Elvira Ramos, a worker at the Generalitat Valenciana, during her statement in the trial against Camps, on March 23.

As Elvira Ramos told the court, it was "

that these people, [referring to the members of the Gürtel plot], met at higher levels, general directors and

."

She said that a contract was even "given" to officials to be awarded to Orange Market, the company that used the plot to land in the community.

"You had to contract with them and you had to contract with them," she stressed in her statement.

The Prosecutor's Office maintains that the corrupt network landed in Valencia thanks to the help of then-president Camps, a friend of El Bigotes, the trusted man of Francisco Correa, Gürtel's ringleader.

Along these lines, the complainant of the plot, José Luis Peñas, stated: “Mr. Correa's plot worked the same everywhere.

[...] In a conversation, Correa told me: 'I am campaigning for Camps.'

And that's how it started in Madrid.

He began by campaigning for José María Aznar and ended up infiltrating a multitude of towns.

[...] If the head hires him and gives him access, everyone who is in the Administration will participate in the same way as that head”.

Camps' attempt to act against the Generalitat official is not the first attack by the former president against those who testify against him in the trial.

The former leader of the PP confronted Correa after the session on January 31, when the businessman pointed to the former head of the autonomous government as a collaborator in the corrupt network: "Camps called him a 'son of a bitch' and reproached him for having lied in his statement," explained the lawyer for the leader of Gürtel about the incident that day, when EL PAÍS heard how the politician went down the stairs of the Court, a few meters from the courtroom, shouting "he's a son of a bitch."

Just a few days later, the lawyer for El Bigotes denounced that Camps had been insulting him and calling him "miserable" during an interrogation.

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