Two institutions that went hand in hand – the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office and the Valencian Anti-Fraud Agency (AVA) – clashed head-on over the expert reports in the “Azud affair”, which investigates allegations of corruption urban during the town hall. period of the late Rita Barberá. The new director of the AVA, Eduardo Beut, ignored the request of the anti-corruption prosecutor that the former head of the anti-fraud investigation, Gustavo Segura, ratifies the expertise carried out by the entity, in the functions of legal assistance, as part of the complex investigation into the “Azud case”. Segura was one of Joan Llinares’ positions within the AVA, dismissed by the new director, very close to the former regional president Eduardo Zaplana. Anti-fraud lawyer Sonia Folgado argued that since his dismissal on September 2, Gustavo Segura “does not have access to the administrative investigation files of this agency in which he participated.” However, prosecutor Pablo Ponce, in a writing to which elDiario.es had access, responds that “it must be the Agency that provides the report prepared to all the designated experts”, including Segura.
The expert report, recalls the representative of the Public Ministry, was prepared “exclusively” with the “data provided” by the Court of Instruction number 13 of Valencia, responsible for investigations into the “Azud case”. There is, Anticorruption indicates, “no documentation or report other than that presented to the court”. The prosecutor, “so that there is no misunderstanding”, asks that it “be handed over” to the four anti-fraud agents summoned to ratify the expertise before the investigating judge. The letter from the prosecution, dated October 25, also recalls that “both the report and the documentation” are “in the possession of all parties involved in the procedure”.
Anti-fraud investigators should be summoned on November 6 to ratify the expertise in court. The investigating judge of the “Azud case”, substitute for the owner, asked the agency headed by Eduardo Beut to provide the expert report to “all” the designated experts.
Gustavo Segura has already been responsible for previous expertise in corruption cases such as the “Erial case”, in whose trial he appeared as an expert. In 2023, according to the latest AVA report, different Valencian courts have requested a total of eight expert opinions from the entity. Since its creation, Antifraud has carried out a total of 31 “procedural collaborations”.
In the “Azud case”, the entity prepared an expertise on the damage of one million dollars to the municipal coffers following the award of the sanitation contract, within the framework of which the brother-in-law of Rita Barberá and another lawyer shared an alleged bribe of 2.2 million euros, and on one of the urban projects of the alleged land in Burjassot.
After the dismissal of Teresa Clemente (deputy director of the entity with Joan Llinares and key responsible in the complaint of the “Blasco case”) and Gustavo Segura (rival of Beut in the selection process of the Corts Valencianes), six investigators left the entity in disarray.
