The investigation into the Azud case – on the contracts awarded and contracted by Valencia City Council between 1999 and 2013 and the alleged payment of illegal commissions to public officials from both the PP and the PSOE – has revealed this Wednesday a previously unknown operation through which Alfonso Grau, strongman and number two of Mayor Rita Barberá, received one million euros from the main businessman under investigation, Jaime María Febrer. Alfonso Grau is accused of the possible commission of the crimes of bribery, prevarication, falsification, influence peddling and money laundering.
According to the summary, of which a part that was still secret has just been opened, Alfonso Grau has a daughter who lives in the United States, specifically in Milwaukee, where she had an account opened at the JP Morgan bank. “This account was the one used by the businessman under investigation Jaime María Febrer to pay Alfonso Grau Alonso the commission, amounting to 1,000,000 euros, agreed by both parties so that Alfonso Grau would facilitate the urban development operation,” says the investigation, which maintains that the bribe was agreed on November 21, 2006, and, to make it effective, it was Alonso himself who provided Febrer with the method of payment “by giving him the details of the bank account held by his daughter and son-in-law in the town of Wisconsin,” according to the summary.
In addition to this, the investigations carried out have revealed that Grau’s daughter, together with her husband, had another account opened in Valencia in which, between 2006 and 2014, “Alfonso Grau Alonso proceeded to make cash deposits into it (from illegal commissions collected), for amounts less than 3,000 euros in order to escape financial and administrative controls, money that was immediately incorporated into María Ángeles Grau’s assets, thus being able to divert an amount of 69,500 euros.”
Apart from the million euros detected in the letter rogatory to the United States, the investigation by the Central Operational Unit, UCO, has carried out an economic study on Alfonso Grau, his daughters and their partners, in which they have identified the “existence of an increase in assets of illicit origin that, between 2004 and 2014, is quantified at, at least 728,051.75 euros”, as they indicate. The arrival of this money to the hands of the alleged recipients of the bribes has been carried out “through different channels and procedures, with the intention of hiding its origin, either through cash deposits in amounts that escape financial control, or through property purchases”, as they have detected.
From the study of all account movements of all kinds, income tax returns, transfers or payments, in the period between 2002 and 2014, Alfonso Grau Alonso made cash deposits for an amount of 412,725 euros, always in amounts that, due to their amount, were not subject to financial or administrative control.
The former deputy mayor was sentenced in 2019 by the Valencia Court to four years in prison for accepting two luxury watches, valued at 25,000 euros, which were given to him by a businessman who had been awarded several municipal contracts. This same year, the Valencia Provincial Court sentenced him to four and a half years in prison and nine years of disqualification from public employment or office as the perpetrator of the continued crimes of embezzlement and passive bribery committed in connection with the financing of the PP’s electoral campaign for the 2007 municipal elections.
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