The lawyer Beatriz García Paesa, niece of the spy Francisco Paesa, described this Friday during the trial of the so-called wasteland case the way of operating of the Cotino businessmen for the payment of the bribes for the awards of the ITV and the wind farms in the Valencian Community under the mandate of Eduardo Zaplana.
García Paesa has explained how in 2001 the then Director General of the Police, Juan Cotino, now deceased, arrived in Luxembourg with 650,000 euros in cash for the constitution of two companies through which, years later, the bribes for the rigging of public contracts, as Cotino's own nephews confessed in court. “There they did not ask about the origin of the money,” said the lawyer who managed the companies. “The banks did not ask more questions than were necessary knowing who the client was and that the money had left Spain legally. Since then the legislation has changed a lot,” she said.
These companies, according to the investigation and as admitted by whoever rigged the award, those who charged for the fixing and those who paid for it, were the ones used to channel the bribery, one of the crimes for which the former president of the Generalitat Valenciana is accused. and former minister Eduardo Zaplana, for whom Anticorruption requests a sentence of 19 years in prison.
García Paesa has admitted that he took charge of these companies from their constitution by the Cotinos until the lawyer Fernando Belhot assumed their management. At that time, as he has said, the ownership of the companies was transferred to Zaplana's chief of staff, Juan Francisco García, who confessed to having rigged the contract and having been paid for it, and to a childhood friend of the former PP minister, Joaquín Barceló, who in one of the first sessions of the trial confessed to being Zaplana's front man.
Lawyer Paesa has also admitted that, in any case, during the time she managed the companies based in Luxembourg “they never” mentioned Eduardo Zaplana to her. “For me, Zaplana was part of the world of Spanish politics and I have never known anything about him in my life nor have I any idea who he is. His name was never mentioned by any of the participants, ever,” she said.
The day included, once again, the testimony of the three agents who took charge of the investigation during the investigation of the case. It was during the question time of the lawyer defending the former president of the Provincial Council when several moments of tension were experienced.
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One of those moments was when the lawyer tried to get the Civil Guard agents to calculate the percentage that was supposedly paid for the rigging of the ITV public tender. “How is the gift calculated? Have you ever seen a commission rate as high as this? “Is it possible that they paid these percentages?” He insistently stated. “There are operations in which even 50% commission is paid,” said one of the agents. In their report, the members of the Central Operational Unit (UCO) indicated that the Cotino group of companies, after the awards, sold shares in the companies that were awarded, which earned them 86.5 million euros “which justifies the high amount of commissions.”
Another of the scuffles has come with the calculation of the profit that, according to the investigation, Eduardo Zaplana obtained from the sale of one of a house in La Finca, a luxury development in Pozuelo de Alarcón. The Civil Guard report maintains that the sale operation, in just two years and five months, generated a capital gain of 3.4 million euros “without taking into account other economic aspects such as the payment of taxes.” Despite this, for 20 minutes, the former minister's lawyer has tried to discredit the agents for not having calculated the capital gain after paying taxes.
The trial is several days late and although the testimony of retired former commissioner José Manuel Villarejo as a witness was scheduled for this Friday, at the suggestion of Zaplana, it has been postponed to May. Even so, Villarejo has gone to court and commented to the media that the truth “is the truth” when asked if he maintains that the Zaplana case was a CNI operation.
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