The trial against former Valencian president Francisco Camps continues to progress in fits and starts, conditioned by the strike of justice administration officials, which has already forced it to be suspended twice. The National Court has managed to hold a new session of the oral hearing on Tuesday – number 18 – after a two-week hiatus, in which seven witnesses have testified. Among them, César Tomás Martín Morales, El Santo, a lawyer and former adviser to the Gürtel plot, who maintained direct contact with the head of the corrupt network, Francisco Correa. To questions from the prosecutor, Martín Morales has stressed that Correa told him “several times” that he had sent Álvaro Pérez, El Bigotes, to the Valencian Community to take advantage of the “friendly” relationship he had with Camps and thus obtain awards of the administration.
The words of Martín Morales reinforce the story of the members of the Gürtel plot accused in this trial, who have agreed with the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office, but also that of other witnesses who have testified along the same lines. Like Alicia Mínguez, a former employee of Correa’s companies, who assured that El Bigotes’ relationship with the then regional president was vox populi within the company: “There was talk and it was rumored that they were going to Valencia because they would have work there.” José Javier Nombela, another employee, supported this version: “There was talk in the office that he had good relations with people from the Generalitat. Among others, with President Camps”. And also the complainant of the corrupt network and friend of Correa, José Luis Peñas: “They left because of Álvaro Pérez, because of their personal friendship [con Camps]. She knew the president. That’s why they decided to make the move. He was a strong baron in the PP ”.
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Correa, El Bigotes and Pablo Crespo (number two in the plot and former Secretary of Organization of the popular Galicians) assured the court that they decided to land in the Valencian Community as a result of their relations becoming complicated with the national PP after the arrival of Mariano Rajoy replacing José María Aznar. Also, that Camps was his way of entering the Generalitat. “Pérez told me that he had a very close relationship with Camps, that there was chemistry,” Crespo said.
A thesis that Martín Morales, sentenced to six years and two months in prison for another line of investigation in the Gürtel case, repeated on Tuesday: “I heard Francisco Correa say several times that he was sending Álvaro to Valencia because he was friends with Camps and I think than with his wife. And that, as a consequence of that, they were going to do business in Valencia. They wanted to expand activities because they were not awarded enough public contracts in Madrid”. A friendship that the former Valencian president has denied, who is facing a request from the Prosecutor’s Office for two and a half years in prison for maneuvering to favor the corrupt network with the award of contracts.
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