Former PP councilor Serafín Castellano, once the all-powerful leader of the popular Valencian people, sits on the bench of the National Court, accused in the so-called “cartel of fire”. Castellano was arrested by the Economic and Fiscal Crime Unit (UDEF) of the National Police early in the morning of May 29, 2015, a few days after the PP’s defeat in the regional elections after two decades of hegemony in the Palau of the Generalitat. Serafín Castellano, at the time delegate of the government of Mariano Rajoy in the Valencian Community, had belonged to all the major internal currents of the Valencian right: the first ‘zaplanista’, briefly ‘olivista’ during the short mandate of José Luis Olivas and, later, ‘campista’.
The beginning of the end of Castellano’s political career began when the journalist Francesc Arabí discovered the gifts, in the form of hunting and hunting rifles, with which the businessman Vicente Huerta had pleased the popular leader. He was not just any businessman: the Generalitat Valenciana awarded him a total of 45 million euros for the extinguishing of the fires.
The photograph that illustrates this information, in which the city councilor of the time and the businessman pose smiling after a hunt, has become a sort of typically Francoist scene of The National Hunting Rifle by Luis García Berlanga updated in the era of the PP-driven housing bubble hangover.
The investigation into the case, conducted by the Central Instruction Court number 6 of the National Court, determined that the former PP leader obtained gifts from the corrupt conspiracy for a total value of at least 163,736 euros, including hunting rifles, hunting and other gifts. The investigation into the case, divided into several separate parts, revealed a fiery cartel of international companies that shared the subcontracting market.
The former PP mayor of the Valencian town of Quartell between 1987 and 2015 and former provincial deputy Francisco Huguet appears as an accused in another procedure related to the alleged laundering of fire cartel proceeds through the lottery, ATM withdrawals and real estate investments.
Almost a decade after his arrest, Serafín Castellano negotiated an agreement with the anti-corruption prosecutor’s office by which he would acknowledge the facts and assume sanctions that do not exceed, separately, two years in prison. Castellano thus avoids a prison sentence after the pact with the fight against corruption, which initially asked him for 21 years in prison.
The first session of the trial, scheduled for Monday, was suspended while the negotiation of the terms of the agreement dragged on. This Tuesday, the hearing is expected to resume to formalize the reduction of sentence and the penalties assumed by the former leader of the Valencian PP and the rest of the accused.
In a document sent to the court of the First Section of the Criminal Chamber of the National Court, the former PP politician expresses his agreement with the account of events in the indictment of the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office, although he invokes the mitigating circumstances of the confessions and unjustified delays.
The Public Prosecutor’s Office charges Serafín Castellano with the alleged crimes of falsification of public documents, corruption, prevarication, embezzlement and illicit association.
The conspiracy, according to Anticorruption, created an “association” of individuals and companies in the firefighting sector that, with previous “clandestine and profit-making” agreements, imposed higher prices on contracting administrations than those that would result from a free and transparent market competition, through fraudulent market allocation or the use of mechanisms to expel other potential bidders and fraudulent schemes or techniques aimed at increasing the costs of contracting for the services to be provided by the contracting administration.
The prosecutor points out that businessman Vicente Huerta had an “intense and corrupt” relationship with Serafín Castellano. Thus, the former PP councilor obtained gifts worth at least 163,736 euros, including hunting rifles or hunting equipment.
The agreement with the Public Ministry, if confirmed, would mean a generous judicial end for a former PP councilor who was facing an initial request for a 21-year prison sentence. Castellano abandoned all political activity after his arrest. He currently works as a lawyer and usually walks around the City of Justice in Valencia equipped with his old councilor’s briefcase.
