There is still no date for the trial for the bribes that businessmen and former officials of the Junta de Castilla y León shared between 2000 and 2015 and which amounts to around 75 million euros, the largest case of corruption in the autonomous community. . The judge has not accepted the evidence or testimony requested exclusively by the former Deputy Minister of Economy of the Government of Castilla y León, Rafael Delgado – from whom the Prosecutor’s Office is asking for 42 years in prison and a 239 million fine for this case alone -, among which are They include the former regional president of the PP, and former senior government officials.
The former president of the Junta de Castilla y León Juan Vicente Herrera will not testify in the ‘wind plot’ trial, like other former officials and current workers of the Junta de Castilla y León such as the former Minister of the Treasury and former regional delegate of the Agency Tributaria, Pilar del Olmo; the one who was an advisor to the former deputy minister of Economy; the former head of Tomás Villanueva’s Cabinet for more than five years during his time as Minister of Economy; and the current Head of the Territorial Industry Service of León.
Nor will the president of Iberdrola, Ignacio Sánchez Galán, testify, another of the requests made by Rafael Delgado’s lawyer, with which he intended to “explain his relationships” with Tomás Villanueva and Juan Vicente Herrera “and Iberdrola’s objective of participating majority in the Wind developments in the Community of Castilla y León, giving participation to local businessmen, from whom it subsequently bought their social shares.” Three Ibedrola executives will be prosecuted and Iberdrola Castilla y León is, in fact, prosecuted as civilly liable, along with the regional government and eight other companies.
The judges handling the case do not see it as “relevant” or “useful” for “the knowledge and resolution” of the judicial case. In the eyes of the magistrate of Section 4 of the Provincial Court, the summons of these witnesses “has no relationship” with the object of the prosecution and, therefore, he rejects this request. This is reflected in the order of admission or rejection of evidence, to which elDiario.es has accessed and which El Mundo de Castilla y León advanced. There is no appeal against these decisions in what is the largest case of corruption in Castilla y León, with a judicial investigation with more than 11,000 pages and that lasted for several years: the investigation began in 2017 and there is still no date set for the oral trial.
Juan Vicente Herrera already had to testify in the Perla Negra case that investigates the million-dollar extra cost of a building of the Ministry of Economy known as Perla Negra. The former vice president of the Junta de Castilla y León assured the judge that he found out that the building was being built three years after the procedures began, when Pablo Trillo, then director of Gesturcal, conveyed his “concerns” to him about a “excessive” price. He said this in a statement in which an attempt was made to prohibit the retransmission of images of Juan Vicente Herrera in his statement.
These are just some of the twenty witnesses requested by the lawyer of the main person investigated for the wind plot – and in the Perla Negra case. The defense of the former number 2 of the deceased Tomás Villanueva also required the testimony of two senior officials from Red Eléctrica Española (REE) and the director of Valoriza, testimonies also rejected.
Delgado’s defense also requested the testimony of eight businessmen who were granted the relevant authorization to install wind farms and who were related to Tomás Villanueva with the aim of clarifying these links: Godava/Vapat, Viloria, Gecalsa, Geza, Signalaciones Villar, Gasindur Distribuciones, Grupo Norte, Avoda Consulting —which paid Tomás Villanueva’s son 6,000 euros per month in 2013 and whose sole director was manager of Prodical, a joint venture that was created by the Board more than 30 years ago to share the risk through private capital in high-tech projects. Finally, Delgado also wanted two office directors from Banco Caja 3 and Barclays to testify.
Rejects that some investigated testify after the tests
The Provincial Court of Valladolid has also rejected that another of the main defendants, the former senior Economy official, Alberto Esgueva – who was exonerated in the Perla Negra case and was spared from paying twenty million euros to the Treasury due to a bureaucratic error – and the businessman Germán Martín Giraldo testify after the witnesses and experts as they had requested. “It must be taken into account that in a trial as complex as the one being tried here, for reasons of organization and signaling, it is not operational for some accused to testify at the beginning and others to testify at the end of the oral trial, all of this unless “All the accused request to testify after the rest of the personal evidence, in which case the Court would consider it,” states the order, to which this newspaper has had access.
Yes, the special delegate of the Tax Agency in Castilla y León has been admitted to testify, but the testimony of a businessman whose Swiss company moved money from some investigated in the wind plot has been rejected.
They requested the declaration of a deceased in 2017
Some of the particular accusations required the testimony of the wind businessman Eduardo Merigó González, who died in 2017 and who was already summoned to the investigative commission of the Cortes of Castilla y León in 2020. The testimony of a businessman residing in Germany is also rejected. because “the usefulness” of it has not been indicated. The judges do admit the testimonies of PWC workers, a businessman in the wind sector of León, some officials of the Junta de Castilla y León, a Gamesa official who already testified in the investigation of the case.
Two of the three judges of the Provincial Court must be replaced
Normally, after the order to admit evidence, a date is set to begin the oral trial, a situation that does not occur in the case of the wind farm due to the special complexity of the matter, its volume, the number of parties and the large amount of evidence to be tested, as well as the availability of the Courtroom and trials already mentioned.” ”In due course, the holding of the oral trial sessions will be announced.”
Sources from the Superior Court of Justice point out what this means: the trial will not be held in the short term, and for several reasons. Two of the three magistrates have had to abstain from the case because they have worked on the judicial investigation when it was in the Investigative Court (Javier de Blas) and during a sick leave of this magistrate (Soledad Ortega). In fact, De Blas is now the president of the Section. Therefore, it is necessary to appoint two more “reinforcement” judges who have not been in contact with the investigation before the trial.
Furthermore, and as the order points out, the complexity of the case must be taken into account when balancing agendas with the lawyers and the logistics of the physical space necessary to hold the trial. And an ‘extra’ issue – as explained by the TSJ – that Section 4 of the Provincial Court has to deal with: it is in charge of judging the four million scam in the case of the coffins, with around twenty people investigated.
It remains to be known, therefore, when the most important corruption trial in Castilla y León will begin, a wait to which is added that of the sentence for the Black Pearl Case, the other major case of corruption in the autonomy, which was seen for sentencing in May 2024.
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