Outrage at the trial of piece A of the Taula case
How is it possible that an essential witness in a corruption case alters his version just when he has to testify at trial? That is the big question that has generated the surprising retraction of Jesús Gordillo during the oral hearing of piece A of the Taula case, which deals with the alleged illegal financing of the electoral campaigns of the PP of Valencia in 2007 and 2011, in which he was The late Rita Barberá is re-elected as mayor.
The impression is dark and is more scandalous, if possible, because he is not the first key witness of the corruption of the Valencian PP that carries out such a thunderous action. Marcos Benavent, the ‘money junkie’, did it in May 2022, during the trial of separate piece J of the same Taula case. Benavent, who made the recordings implicating the accused on which the investigation of the Central Operational Unit (UCO) of the Civil Guard was based, had cooperated in that investigation until in his testimony he denied everything he had stated and questioned the authenticity of the tapes.
The ‘money junkie’, as he called himself when he collaborated with justice, could not prevent two sentences from being imposed on him, one in that trial and another in a subsequent trial. He also did not favor Alfonso Rus, former president of the Valencia Provincial Council, who was also convicted. His retraction pointed to another cause, the Erial case, in which the former president of the Generalitat Valenciana and former minister Eduardo Zaplana is accused. A case that originated from his and whose beginning he described in his new version as a “montage against Zaplana.”
Although both spent years supporting a version that, incredibly, in the end they contradicted, the very relevant difference between Benavent and Gordillo is that the second is not prosecuted and testified as a witness. According to the law, the ‘money junkie’ would have the right to lie in his defense. Gordillo no. As Lucas Marco narrated in his chronicle, the former advisor of the accused Alfonso Grau when the latter was vice mayor of Valencia, retracted everything, attributed the blame to a deceased person and accused the UCO of pressuring him, to the delight of the lawyers of the defenses. The president of the second section court reminded him several times of the definition of false testimony due to the discrepancy between what he declared in the investigation and what he stated in the courtroom.
If Benavent’s retraction pointed to Erial, Gordillo’s seems to be directed at the Azud case, another corruption plot around the City Council of which Barberá was mayor in which, in addition to businessman Jaime Febrer, among the main accused are the politician’s brother-in-law deceased, José María Corbín, and her three daughters. The point is that the person who was a protected witness has suddenly changed his version and there is no one who does not find such a notable phenomenon suspicious.
The crossroads of Valencian socialism
It remains to be seen whether the leadership of the PSOE manages to prevent the next congress of the Valencian socialists from becoming a new struggle of attrition, like those that occurred in the long years in which the PSPV was in the opposition. After postponing the meeting for several weeks, finally, the executive still led by the former president of the Generalitat Valenciana Ximo Puig called the conclave for March 23 and 24 in Benicàssim, although the primary vote will be on February 25.
With Minister Diana Morant as an unofficial reference for the federal leadership, President Pedro Sánchez and Ximo Puig himself, and the still budding (although very active) candidacies of the provincial secretaries of Alicante and Valencia, Alejandro Soler and Carlos Fernández Bielsa , respectively, for the moment, all scenarios are possible at this crossroads of Valencian socialism whose countdown is already activated.
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