The phrase is from journalist Frances Arabí: “The Harry Houdini of underground politics spent almost three decades practicing judicial escapism in all the scandals he collected: the purchase of the turncoat Maruja Sánchez to become mayor of Benidorm on 22 November 1991, the Sanz case, the Terra Mítica case (the womb of Zaplana corruption), the IVEX-Julio Iglesias case, the Lezo scandal… All the shady affairs and corruption were the Zaplana case, but this one was never affected judicially the shit. “He never went to testify, not even as a witness.” The political life of the former president of the Generalitat and former minister of José María Aznar has been a constant of scandals and scares from which he emerged unscathed by all. Until this week, when he was sentenced to 10 years and five months in prison for the Erial case. The list is long.
Eduardo Zaplana Hernández Soro was just three years in charge of the mayor of Benidorm. However, what is striking is how he obtained the leadership in November 1991. In May of that year, the PSPV obtained a majority and formed a government. However, only six months had passed when a young Eduardo Zaplana (he was 35 years old at the time) acceded to the command post. thanks to the socialist turncoat Maruja Sánchezwho had occupied the Department of Social Welfare with the socialists. All of this occurred more than a decade before the well-known Tamayazo who gave the presidency of the Community of Madrid to the also popular Esperanza Aguirre.
Sánchez left the socialist municipal group in October 1991 (the socialist majority was eleven councilors, including the former head of Social Welfare, by ten councilors from the Popular Party), and on November 22 he would support the motion of censure promoted with his vote. by the PP of Eduardo Zaplana against the until then first mayor, the socialist Manuel Catalán. Sánchez, who died in June 2023 at the age of 81. The councilor would graduate to the Social Welfare delegation after the motion of censure, already with the Popular Party in the municipal government, and would later hold different advisory positions in different institutions in which the Popular Party governed.
Naseiro Case
To Zaplana The phrase “I am in politics to get rich” is wrongly attributed to him.which was actually pronounced by the former popular leader Vicente Sanz. The sentence was pronounced by the former general secretary of the PP of Valencia, convicted of sexual abuse when he was head of human resources at RTVVand appears in some judicial recordings published in 1994 about an alleged bribery of contracts in Benidorm within the framework of the Naseiro Case.
What does appear in the summary of the Naseiro case, the first judicial investigation into the alleged illegal financing of the Popular Partyis a conversation in which Zaplana acknowledges to former councilor Salvador Palop that he has to “get rich” because he is “ruined”: “I have to earn a lot of money, I need a lot of money to live,” says Aznar’s former minister. The audios of those conversations were finally annulled as evidence and the case ended up blowing up.
Terra Mítica Case
In April 2016, twenty years after the events analyzed occurred, the Justice condemned around twenty people -two former directors of the park (one of them Zaplana’s ex-brother-in-law Justo Valverde) and the rest, businessmen- for fraud and tax fraud in the construction of Terra Mítica, the theme park promoted by the Generalitat Valenciana in Benidorm during Eduardo Zaplana’s time as president and with public financing from the Valencian savings banks, controlled by the PP. The court considers proven the existence of a scheme that appropriated public money by overvaluing its services, issuing false invoices or, directly, charging for work not performed. The sentences, confirmed in 2019 by the Supreme Courtranged from five years and ten months for the two former directors to the 46 years to which businessman Antonio Moreno was sentenced.
Ivex case
The Ivex case investigated an alleged crime of embezzlement by millionaire payments from the Valencian Government to the singer Julio Iglesias between 1997 and 1999. The contract with the artist imposed the payment of 2.2 million, but there was a “contract B” that allegedly raised that amount to 5.9 million tax-free. The former general director of the Valencian Institute of Exports (Ivex) José María Tabares is being investigated for these events, who was sentenced to five years in prison for fraud in another case in 2005. Tabares was located in Japanwhere he works at a university. The Provincial Court dismissed the case that it opened in 2005, but kept the crimes alive while waiting to receive the response from two rogatory commissions on payments from the Valencian Government in the Cayman Islands and Shanghai. Finally, it was archived in April of last year when the crimes prescribed.
Lezo Case
Once again, some recordings put Zaplana in the spotlight in a judicial investigation. On this occasion, in the Lezo case, in which the Civil Guard registered a conversation with the former president of the Community of Madrid, the popular Ignacio Gonzálezin which the latter requested the mediation of José María Aznar’s former minister before the then minister Rafael Catalá so that Jesús Alonso would occupy the position of chief prosecutor of the National Court, a position to which he finally agreed. The judge maintains among those investigated for this cause, among some sixty people, the former president of the Generalitat.
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