The Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office has decided to appeal to the Supreme Court in a complaint against the filing of what is known as the ‘smurf’ case, within the Imelsa case, for most of the defendants. The decision is adopted after the Prosecutor’s Office of the Audiencia de Valencia requested it.
As sources familiar with the procedure have confirmed to Europa Press, the public ministry, after studying the case, has agreed to file a complaint with the Supreme Court against the provisional file decreed by the fourth section of the Provincial Court of Valencia.
The objective of this resource, advanced by the chain BEis to get this procedure reopened – to revoke the decision of the Valencian magistrates and allow an appeal to be filed – which has been under investigation for more than six years and which is only still active for some of the defendants such as the former Vice Mayor of Valencia Alfonso Grau, who was also the right hand of former mayor Rita Barberá.
The former general secretary of the group, Mari Carmen García Fuster, is also being prosecuted, in her case for facts related to the 2011 elections; and the former president of the Valencian Foundation for Innovation and Knowledge (FIVEC) and delegate of CEyD (Center for Strategies and Development), Juan Eduardo Santón (for embezzlement).
The Court of Instruction number 18 of Valencia agreed last October to prosecute fifty former councilors and popular advisors of the consistory for the alleged money laundering of 50,000 euros in the municipal group.
Faced with this resolution, the defendants appealed and the Court agreed with most of them and shelved the procedure -provisionally- considering that no crime had been committed.
The Prosecutor’s Office then presented an appeal notice to the Supreme Court against this resolution of the High Court, considering that it was a firm and not provisional dismissal -as indicated in the court’s resolution- and, therefore, being able to appeal .
However, the Court refused to process the announcement of the appeal before the High Court, which left the door open for the Public Prosecutor to present a complaint that has now been agreed upon and that the Supreme Court must study.
The case received its name from an alleged money laundering operation attributed in the 2015 elections to 49 former mayors and advisers from the Barberá stage at the head of the consistory (plus the PP).
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