• The summary: the long 'martyrdom' of the former minister

After the explosion of the first and second part of the Erial case - where the Central Operating Unit (UCO) of the Civil Guard places Eduado Zaplana as director of a laundering and collection of bribes in exchange for public awards to benefit the family Cotino-, there is still a part of the summary that remains secret and restless to the politicians who at one time were part of the universe of the former minister of Aznar.

Among the documentation examined there is content that stands out above the rest: the personal agendas of the former president of the Generalitat Valenciana, notebooks in which since 1995 he pointed out in detail meetings , meetings and decisions. However inconsequential they were.

Zaplana, characterized by being a methodical man, boasts this in the pages of the dossiers that researchers are analyzing.

The agendas, as this newspaper has learned, are very extensive and include names of many politicians or former politicians who at some time had weight both at the state and regional level. That they reflect official meetings derived from their category as a politician or not yet unknown.

Investigators finalize the tracking of these data to prepare the corresponding report and put it on the table of the magistrate who investigates the matter.

However, the fact that there are names and different meetings does not imply that these people are related to the murky business attributed to Zaplana in the framework of the proceedings that are investigated in the Court of Instruction number 8 of Valencia although perhaps may be sources of information for other matters.

What does follow from the annotations that still remain under summary secrecy is the intense network of relationships that it has woven since he acceded to the presidency of the Generalitat Valenciana and the detail with which he collects them.

It also shows their ability to interact with people from different fields, in principle, antagonistic to each other. The lifting of the secret of this piece keeps at a certain level of alert those who contacted him at some point because Zaplana pointed everything out with absolute precision . In fact, there are several agendas that Uco agents are analyzing, given the bulky content.

Once Judge Isabel Rodríguez makes this part public, the last one that remains under secrecy, the entire summary of the Erial case will be public, although it is true that the most compromised investigations for the former minister of Aznar transcended months ago.

The conclusions of the Uco are devastating. Agents say he received 10.5 million in bribes from the Cotino family in exchange for giving him 85 million in awards; who traveled to Uruguay to establish two opaque companies to save the money; that he had already begun repatriating the amount allegedly injected by the Cotinos, who managed to wash 2.9 million and that was intimately related to the figurehead of the former president of the Community of Madrid Ignacio González.

In addition, the declaration of who is considered his frontman is key in this process: Uruguayan lawyer Fernando Belhot. It is the main testimony of charge against him .

Before the magistrate and the anti-corruption prosecutor Pablo Ponce, he confessed that it would have helped him to evade money to accounts abroad. Belhot - the man who managed the bribes abroad that, according to the Civil Guard, Zaplana obtained from the Cotinos - decided to speak in exchange for immunity after closing an agreement with Anticorruption. When he decided to collaborate, he was totally besieged by the Erial operation.

The months before his agreement with prosecutor Pablo Ponce - who traveled to Uruguay to meet him - had been very intense judicially speaking. With Zaplana in prison, Belhot was listed as accused and the requirements for filing to file a statement were constant. Even an international arrest warrant was issued.

Finally, Belhot decided to drop the former minister and close an agreement. Automatically went from being charged to witness . His testimony left the former president of the Generalitat in a very compromised situation in the case against him. Belhot admitted in his videoconference statement that Zaplana was the true owner of the societies in which they "hid" the opaque funds. Belhot even gave a figure of the money he managed: 7.9 million euros .

According to the prosecutor, 90% of the money sent by the former minister was received in Madrid by his secretary, who is also investigated in the case, who was given "some contact with the outside, or even a friend or driver" . In seven years of "collaboration," Belhot calculated that he received 2.3 million euros, mainly between 2016 and 2017. A call from Zaplana, he concluded, clarified that "everything had been compliant."

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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  • UCO
  • Civil Guard
  • Valencia
  • Eduardo Zaplana
  • Alicante

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