The judgment of the call
This Thursday, the Erial case
was the scene of a scuffle between the Anticorruption representative and Eduardo Zaplana's tax advisor, Francisco Grau, who, for more than three hours, tried to divert and omit to respond to the questions raised by the prosecutor. . The lack of specificity from the advisor to the former president of the Generalitat Valenciana and former minister has even been the subject of several calls for attention from the president of the Valencia Court, who has asked the accused to clarify his answers.
The philosophy of his lame argument has been to maintain Zaplana's innocence, alleging that he knew nothing about money abroad or companies, criticizing the confessed figurehead of the former PP leader and pointing out the Cotino businessmen as the sole owners of the companies and the money that the accusation attributes to the former minister as payment for bribes for the awards.
Francisco Grau is accused, like Eduardo Zaplana, of participating in the alleged plot designed to collect and launder illegal commissions paid by the brothers Vicente and José Cotino, winners of part of the concessions for the wind farms and the electricity service. Technical Vehicle Inspection of the Valencian Community under the mandate of Zaplana himself. The prosecution is asking for eight years in prison for the crimes of falsehood and money laundering.
The tax advisor's statement began in a challenging tone and faded as the hours passed. The Anticorruption representative has repeated the questions to the accused as many times as necessary until obtaining answers that, to some extent, were related to the topic. “As I am of a detached nature, I will explain it to you again,” he has responded to the prosecutor on one of the occasions in which he has requested an explanation for the fact that he informed Eduardo Zaplana about businesses that, according to his theory, nothing They had to do with the former minister and that, according to the accusation, were operations of the PP leader himself. The prosecutor's actions have cornered Grau on several occasions, who has given incongruous answers.
“He makes a will but it is not,” he also stated when questioned about a document seized by the Civil Guard and referring to the distribution that Zaplana's front man and friend was going to make of his assets in the event of death. The writing was never signed. “You have given an excessive and misplaced interpretation to those documents,” he also justified the prosecutor.
“I don't know what I said because I've been here all morning,” was another of Francisco Grau's responses, who tried to dress as normal that, in an operation worth 2.8 million euros, he would not speak to the headlines. of that money but only operated with the instructions given to him by Joaquín Barceló, Zaplana's childhood friend who this Wednesday confessed to having been a front man for the former president of the Generalitat Valenciana. Regarding this, in addition, he has said that, at the conclusion of his testimony before the court, he assured him that they had been forced to do so, to recognize the former minister as the owner of money and companies. “At the beginning of December he told me that he was not going to return to prison,” he said, referring to the time that both of them, in addition to Zaplana, were in jail after being arrested. “I valued it too and they advised me to do it,” he added regarding the agreement that some defendants have reached, among whom is Zaplana's childhood friend, with the prosecution so that they collaborate with justice in exchange. , presumably, of some reduction in the request for sentences.
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