Two institutions that went hand in hand – the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office and the Valencian Anti-Fraud Agency (AVA) – have clashed head-on due to the expert reports in the ‘Azud case’, which investigates alleged urban corruption during the mayoral period of the Rita Barberá deceased. The new director of the AVA, Eduardo Beut, ignored the anti-corruption prosecutor’s request that the former head of Anti-Fraud Investigation, Gustavo Segura, ratify the expert reports carried out by the entity, in judicial assistance functions, within the framework of the complex investigation of the ‘Azud case’. Segura was one of the positions from Joan Llinares’ previous stage in the AVA fired by the new director, very close to former regional president Eduardo Zaplana. The Antifraud lawyer, Sonia Folgado, argued that since he was dismissed on September 2, Gustavo Segura “does not have access to the administrative investigation files of this Agency in which he has participated.” However, prosecutor Pablo Ponce, in a writing to which elDiario.es has had access, responds that “it must be the Agency that provides the report prepared to all the designated experts,” including Segura.
The expert report, recalls the representative of the Public Ministry, was prepared “exclusively” with the “data provided” by the Investigative Court number 13 of Valencia, in charge of the investigations into the ‘Azud case’. There is, Anticorruption indicates, “no documentation or report other than that presented in court.” The prosecutor, “so that there is no misunderstanding,” requests that “it be delivered” to the four Anti-Fraud officials summoned to ratify the expert opinion before the investigating judge. The Prosecutor’s Office’s letter, dated October 25, also recalls that “both the report and the documentation” are “in the possession of all the parties involved in the procedure.”
The Anti-Fraud investigators are scheduled to be summoned on November 6 to ratify the expert reports before the court. The investigating magistrate of the ‘Azud case’, substitute for the owner, has required the agency directed by Eduardo Beut to provide the expert report to “all” the designated experts.
Gustavo Segura has already been in charge of previous expert reports in corruption cases such as the ‘Erial case’, in whose trial he appeared as an expert. In 2023, according to the AVA’s latest report, various Valencian courts requested a total of eight expert reports from the entity. Since its creation, Antifraude has carried out a total of 31 “procedural collaborations”.
In the ‘Azud case’, the entity prepared an expert report on the million-dollar damage to the municipal coffers as a result of the awarding of the sanitation contract, within the framework of which Rita Barberá’s brother-in-law and another lawyer shared an alleged bribe of 2.2 million euros, and about one of the urban projects of the alleged plot in Burjassot.
After the dismissal of Teresa Clemente (deputy director of the entity with Joan Llinares and key official in the complaint of the ‘Blasco case’) and Gustavo Segura (Beut’s rival in the selection process in the Corts Valencianes), six investigators left the entity in disarray.
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