València (EFE) of trials for this macro-cause of corruption.
Rus awaits a sentence for another of the pieces in the Imelsa case, the alleged illegal hiring of personnel who did not go to their jobs at the provincial public company Imelsa, which was seen for sentencing last March.
In this new trial, which is expected to last until June 9, the role of Rus – who was also mayor of Xàtiva and provincial president of the PP – and seven others investigated within the framework of separate piece D of the ” Imelsa case”, regarding the alleged irregularities detected in the award and provision of a telephone service.
Crimes, penalties and defendants, plus Rus
Crimes of influence peddling, administrative prevarication, embezzlement of public funds, fraud in contracting, false commercial documents and money laundering will be judged.
The Prosecutor’s Office claims prison sentences of 8 years for Alfonso Rus, 4 and a half years for Marcos Benavent, 13 years for his former father-in-law, Mariano López, and another businessman who acted as administrator of Servimun, the winning firm, and 6 years for an official of the Diputación that supposedly collaborated in the fixing.
Together with Rus, the instructor directs the procedure against the former manager of the public company Imelsa Marcos Benavent -the self-styled “money junkie”-, his ex-father-in-law -who was awarded the telephone assistance service-, two officials from the Provincial Council, another businessman and two relatives.
The alleged irregularities
The events date back to May 2013, when Imelsa, a public company of the Valencia Provincial Council and currently called Divalterra, awarded Servimun SL the contract for the provision of services through a multi-channel service center (telephone and telematics) to taxpayers of the municipalities that delegated the management and tax collection to the provincial corporation.
According to the information collected by the Central Operating Unit (UCO) of the Civil Guard, the winning bidder received a total of 930,000 euros from Imelsa between August 2013 and January 2016 for this contract.
The judge considers that there could have been “a deliberate purpose of awarding a contract for the provision of the service not to the best offer, but to a certain one and decided in advance, with awareness of both arbitrary favoring and the risk of diverting and wasting public resources.” ”.
The investigator also underlined the “neighborly and friendly relationship” between one of the accused officials, Salvador DI, and the businessman José Mariano LS, who was in turn the former father-in-law of Marcos Benavent and had “close knowledge” of Alfonso Rus.
José Mariano LS received about 150,000 euros from Servimun SL through a commercial company, Técnicas Legales Administrativas (TLA), without activity and managed by his sister-in-law.
The judge considered it “evident” that if the administrator of Servimun SL, Fernando José PZ, paid such an amount to the previous one, it is because the latter “owed him some favor” in relation to the contract, “most probably because he acted as a procurer” before the then president of the Diputación or Salvador DI