The anti-corruption prosecutor’s office reduced the sentence requested from 21 years to 2 years and 7 months in prison. Serafin Castellanoformer Government Delegate in the Valencian Community and former Minister of the PP Government, after having acknowledged the facts attributed to him during the trial for the so-called “fire cartel” before the National Court.
The representative of the Public Ministry explained that previous conversations with the defense of the accused resulted in the recognition of the facts by both Castellano and 11 other defendants.
In his statement at the trial, the prosecutor reminded Castellano that “he admitted, with the assistance of his lawyer, all the facts of the prosecution’s indictment.” “Yes, I ratify all the writings”he stressed.
The only defendants who have ruled out admitting the alleged acts and negotiating a reduced sentence are Rubén Mariano García; the former director of the Avialsa company Francisco Antonio Alandí; the former firefighter coordinator Vicente Bosca; and the head of the Operational Division of the General Directorate of Emergencies and Security of the Generalitat of Catalonia, Manuel Bosch.
It should be noted that although the instructor proposed to judge 17 people, only 16 sitting on the platform after the death of Fernando Espejo last year.
These agreements led to reducing the sentence requested by the Castellano prosecutor’s office, among other things, from the initial sentence of 21 years to two years and seven months in prison. The prosecutor’s office initially charged him with the crimes of falsification of a public document, the crime of continued corruption, prevarication, embezzlement and illicit association.
“The defense of this accused, almost imminent, practically at the trial, almost not, once the trial was over, was the one that expressed to the public prosecutor the desire for a definitive recognition,” the prosecutor detailed.
Contracts to extinguish fires
Let us recall that the investigating judge proposed to judge in 2022 the “fire cartel” for alleged fraud in firefighting contracts.
In the order by which the Criminal Chamber confirmed the prosecution of the defendants, in November 2022, it recalled that the investigating judge, when prosecuting a group of people including businessmen, authorities or air navigation officials, had described “profit-making” practices to “modify the normal conditions of competition in public procurement and tendering procedures”, corruption by means of alleged bribes.
The prosecutor pointed out in his brief that the accused, between 1999 and at least 2018, in relation to the contractual activity of the public sector in the field of air navigation, mainly in the extinguishing of forest fires affecting the general interest, they developed multiple illicit behaviors.
Hunting Related Gifts
It was in June 2022 that the judge of the National Court Manuel García Castellón, now retired, explained that the members of the “fire cartel” had acted inappropriately by increasing spending in favor of the concerted individuals and companies; allowing for contractual extensions or modifications; approve invoices or favor certain individuals and entities.
Only to the former Valencian high official, and without exhausting all the gifts offered, were offered, as specified by the judge and taking into account only the magnitude of the hunting activities, gifts amounting to at least 163,736.02 euros.
Businessmen and their companies would have geographically divided the public procurement market in the sector, as well as the specific procurement procedures, even through progressive meetings in which they pre-established which companies would participate, in which areas of influence and the successive compensations and settlements.
García Castellón stressed that these alleged frauds would have taken place not only in Spain but also in other countriesand that they would sometimes have led to the cancellation of a call for tenders, thus generating a subsequent increase in the price of the offer within the framework of a negotiated procedure without publicity.
And he clarified that, according to the reports of the General Intervention of the State Administration (IGAE), only in the Valencian Community, where the main infractions were verified, subject to the exclusive agreement of AVIALSA – linked to the main investigator, Vicente Huerta Domínguez – and occasionally the UTES in which other people investigated were integrated, between 1999 and 2017, contracts were concluded for a total of 151,585,386.22 euros.
Customer network
The alleged corruption of officials and authorities involved in these contractual processes was carried out with the delivery of gifts, which would have resulted in “a systematic action aimed at generating clientelist attitudes in the sphere of the administration involved in the sector.”
Specifically, according to the judge, it has been proven that, in the contractual field of the Valencian Community and Catalonia, the group of entities or companies linked to AVIALSA has carried out, by various means, in favour of officials or authorities, deliveries of cash or gifts such as vehicles, hunting, firearms and accessories, watches and jewelry or stays in hotel establishments.
For the then president of the Central Court of Instruction number 6, the facts could constitute crimes of corruption; criminal organization; modification of prices during competitions or public contracts; falsification of documents; embezzlement of public funds; procrastination; illicit association, negotiations prohibited to public officials; and influence peddling and illegal exactions.
