“I don’t want to run away”

The fourth section of the Provincial Court of Valencia held a hearing on Thursday to assess the entry into prison of the former president of the Generalitat Valenciana and former minister of the PP Eduardo Zaplana after being sentenced to 10 years and five months for the conspiracy to ‘ITV in the Erial affair.

The court convened this hearing after the anti-corruption prosecution, once Erial’s sentence was pronounced, which is not final and can be appealed to the Supreme Court, requested immediate entry of Zaplana in prison, aware of the risk of escape.

At the hearing, the magistrates heard the arguments of both the prosecutor and the defense and finally, they will make a decision, which will not be known this Thursday, but in the coming days, according to judicial sources.

The anti-corruption demanded the imprisonment of Zaplana a week after learning of the sentence pronounced by the fourth section of the Provincial Court of Valencia which convicted him. Furthermore, he recalled that a senior official of his government

This Thursday, the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office requested that the former minister be placed in temporary prison after having assessed a “risk of flight” due to his great fortune abroad and reminded the Court that a senior official of his government in Valencia fled to Japan, a country that does not have an extradition agreement with Spain, after being convicted of corruption.

On the other hand, the Valencian politician’s defense provided a medical report prepared by the court’s forensic experts in 2019 to rule out this measure. In this sense, he reiterated that all these years “he remained at the disposal of Justice and did not take advantage of any moment to flee justice.”

At the end of the hearing, Zaplana intervened to reaffirm that “I have no intention of escaping.”

The judgment considers as proven that he received commissions for the allocation of ITV channels in the Valencian Community between 1997 and 2003 and that he channeled them through a complex corporate structure both in Spain and in countries like Panama or Luxembourg and with accounts in Andorra.

The court declares him guilty of the crimes of prevarication, corruption, falsification of documents and money laundering and also imposes on him, in addition to prison, a total of 17 years and 10 months of prohibition from exercising a job or a public function, three years’ ban from law. the exercise of his profession and fines which exceed a total of 25 million euros.

However, he acquitted him of the crime of criminal grouping.