Niurka Montalvo, former long jump world champion and former regional secretary of Camps, during her statement in the trial against the former Valencian president, on May 9, 2023.
Niurka Montalvo has taken many leaps in life. Some of great length. Like those that earned him the gold medal at the 1999 World Athletics Championships in Seville. Or the one that in 2007, by the hand of the then Valencian president Francisco Camps, allowed her to land in politics as Secretary of Sports of the Generalitat, where she remained until 2011. Two years later, in 2013, the Spanish-Cuban athlete ended up charged in the investigations into the landing of the Gürtel plot in the region and in the PP – the case against her was filed in 2014. And a decade later, this 2023, Montalvo has returned to write a new episode of his busy career, with his testimony as a witness in the trial held in the National Court against Camps himself and 25 other people. The athlete has denied any knowledge about the corruption network.
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Camps still has several bitter drinks left in the Gürtel trial
Niurka Montalvo has insisted that she never met anyone from Orange Market, the company created by the leader of Gürtel, Francisco Correa, to enter the Valencian Community. And Álvaro Pérez, alias El Bigotes, Correa's right-hand man in the region? "The first time I saw him was on TV," said the former athlete, who began her statement by admitting that she maintains a relationship of some "friendship" with Camps. The former president faces a request from the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office of two and a half years in prison for allegedly maneuvering in favor of the plot to award him contracts, after having helped the corrupt network to land in the Administration, due to his friendship with El Bigotes.
"What kind of friendship do you have with Camps?" asked the defense of the former leader of the PP to the 1999 long jump world champion.
—"He was one of the first people I met when I arrived in Valencia. He went for a run sometimes with us. He is a friend in the sports field. But I have never been to his house and he has never been to mine, although I do know his wife. And yes, we have stayed to run or play sports. Right now, they do pilates and I, sometimes, join to snack or drink coffee, "answered the witness.
"And do you remember having received any order from Camps or Dora Ibars [the former general director of Institutional Promotion who, according to the Prosecutor's Office, received "verbal instructions" from the president to award Orange Market works of the Fitur 2009 tourism fair] to contract with someone specific?", insisted the lawyer.
"Nope. I never received any order from anyone to contract with someone [...] Nobody ever told me anything to hire," Montalvo replied.
After three weeks of pause due to the strike of officials of the Administration of Justice, which forced to suspend the trial sine die on April 18, the oral hearing resumed on Monday with the questioning of Niurka Montalvo and seven other witnesses, of the 30 who have already paraded before the court. And there is still a long way to go: for example, that Ricardo Costa, who was secretary general in the Valencian PP and whose confession was key to sitting Camps on the bench; and Chief Inspector Manuel Morocho, lead investigator of the Gürtel case, who described how the regional party, headed by Camps, was irregularly financed through a "systemic" formula of illegal billing agreed with the corrupt network.
According to the provisional timetable provided by the court to the parties, the trial will continue tomorrow and, after another 24 sessions, is expected to end on July 31, with the last word of the 26 accused. Including Camps.
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