Madrid (EFE).- The former president of the Valencian Generalitat Francisco Camps will fight this Wednesday the accusations of the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office, which attributes him to having given orders to a subordinate to irregularly award a contract to the Gürtel plot in 2009, a thesis that he will reject with forcefulness in his statement as a defendant in the National Court.
One of the main regional leaders of the PP for years faces his appearance in court “very calmly”, convinced that “there is absolutely nothing here” and that the strategy of the Prosecutor’s Office of “linking” the hiring of Gürtel with “any type of personal relationship” with the businessman Álvaro Pérez, alias el Bigotes, is “broken”, as he made clear to journalists at the end of yesterday’s session.
After listening to the versions of 25 defendants, some favorable and others contrary to his line of defence, Camps finally sat down this morning in front of the National Court that is trying him for crimes of fraud and prevarication, for which the prosecutors ask for him two and a half years in prison and ten years of disqualification.
This is the last of the legal fronts that Camps has faced for years and represents his second statement as a defendant in a trial related to the Gürtel plot; The first was in the case of “the suits”, from which he was acquitted and which led him to resign from the presidency of the Generalitat and the Valencian PP in 2011.
Camps, who believes that “normally” is that this process also ends in acquittal, is accused of giving verbal instructions to the General Director of Institutional Promotion Salvadora Ibars so that the Orange Market company should be awarded the assembly of a Community exhibitor at the Fitur fair in 2009 for 366,529 euros. This defendant denies it.
Anticorruption maintains that Camps provided Álvaro Pérez with “access to senior positions in the regional administration”, who in turn and “following instructions” from him, “made it possible” for Orange Market to “illegally obtain contracts” with the Generalitat.
That telephone conversation in which the former president referred to Bigotes as a “soul friend” and said “I want you an egg” will surely come out again today, words that Camps has always downplayed and has framed in a Christmas card.
Because the former president categorically rejects that he had a friendly relationship with this businessman, as he himself and the main convicts in the plot, such as Francisco Correa or Pablo Crespo, affirm. What’s more, it was precisely Correa’s mention of that supposed personal relationship that caused Camps to confront him at the end of his statement, at the end of January.
Who was president of the Valencian Generalitat for 8 years believes that these versions are the result of the “obscene pacts” that these and other defendants have reached with the Prosecutor’s Office to acknowledge the facts with the aim of seeing their sentence requests reduced, something that The prosecutor flatly denied.
The rest, including three former Camps advisers, have already denied in court having favored the plot or having received orders to do so. This Wednesday it will be the turn of the expresident.
