The Fourth Section of the Provincial Court agreed to maintain the situation of provisional release without bail of the former president of the Generalitat and former minister Eduardo Zaplana, whom it sentenced last October to sentences totaling 10 years and 5 months in prison for crimes of prevarication, corruption, falsification of documents and money laundering in the context of what is known as the “Erial affair”, in a judgment subject to appeal to the Supreme Court.
The Court, in an order notified to the parties this Monday, rejects the Prosecutor’s request to enter temporary prison because it considers that the risk of escape “is non-existent”, although it imposes as a precautionary measure the withdrawal of his passport with a ban on leaving the national territory and an obligation to appear apud-acta before the court of his domicile on the first Monday of each month and as many times as he is summoned.
The magistrates maintain in support of their resolution that the detainee “enjoys family, social and even medical roots in the national territory”, roots “which make it difficult to think of him leaving” this same national territory to avoid serve the sentences imposed on him. . were imposed.
In addition, the court recalls that its assets abroad and also in Spain “have already been seized by means of confiscations and royal precautionary measures adopted in this case” and are therefore “at the disposal of Spanish justice”, this which also “reduces their economic capabilities when planning an exit from the national territory, which there is no evidence that they have attempted.”
In this sense, the Court emphasizes that Zaplana has so far shown “no gesture or sign” which suggests that he intends to evade the action of Justice and not accept compliance with the sentences once declared. definitive.
Thus, since the investigating court in this case pronounced his provisional release, on February 7, 2019, with precautionary measures similar to those currently maintained, “he punctually respects” the obligation to appear weekly before the court of his home. .
He was also present at all sessions of the oral trial “and did not miss any judicial appeal”, specifies the Fourth Section of the Valencia Court, “even when his line of defense could have been compromised, when some of the accused accepted their responsibility.
In short, the convicted person has not carried out “any action intended to evade the action of justice”, even if the request from the public prosecutor to proceed to the penitentiary appearance provided for in article 505 of the Code of Criminal Procedure is known. , since he appeared at this event and was once again “at the disposal of the Court”.
All these reasons and circumstances lead the magistrates to “the conviction that the aforementioned risk of flight is non-existent and does not justify the interested precautionary measure of provisional detention, communicated and without bail” of Eduardo Zaplana.
