The former vice-mayor, former councilor of the Valencia City Council and who was the right-hand man of the late Rita Barberá, Alfonso Grau, received a commission of one million euros for an urban planning operation across the United States (USA) says one of his daughters, according to the judge in charge of the Azoud casewho recently agreed to lift the secrecy of the remaining parts – the zinc – after seven years of investigation.
This is clear from an order of the Court of Instruction number 13 of Valencia, dated May 2021, and which appears in one of the documents on which the summary secrecy of this case was lifted, in which investigations are underway. alleged “bites” in Grau in exchange for public works prizes in the city. The former vice mayor was recently sentenced to four and a half years in prison for irregular financing of the city’s PP and in 2022 to nine months in prison for accepting high-end watches from a businessman who signed 16 contracts with the city hall between 2006 and 2015.
In this order, a summary of Alfonso Grau’s performance is made and it is placed as a fundamental pillar of the plot. It is indicated that he received commissions of an illicit nature for favors in the exercise of his public function.
The investigation, the judge said, was able to verify the participation of the person investigated, Alfonso Grau, in at least eight corruption operations based on urban planning operations in favor of the businessman. Jaume Febrer and its group companies.
In concrete terms, the former public official is attributed with the processing of administrative files in an “arbitrary” and “discretionary” manner in favour of the particular interests of certain commercial companies belonging to the State. Axis groupcreated and directed by the investigated businessman Jaime Febrer.
In exchange for these steps, Grau received various commissions. To detect them, the file indicates that an economic study was carried out on the former vice-mayor and his closest environment, his two daughters and their respective partners – one of them married to a North American subject residing in Wisconsin (USA) -.
This study made it possible to identify the existence of a increase in illicit assets which, between 2004 and 2014, is estimated at at least 728,051.75 euros, all of which was processed in cash and integrated, through different channels and procedures, into his personal assets with the intention of hiding its origin, either through income or through real estate purchases.
This unjustified and illicit increase, the judge continued, emerged after an investigation into his entire professional, family and corporate environment, given that Alfonso Grau and his family are linked to various commercial companies, including Edificio Familia 3000 SL – also investigated -, dedicated to the rental of commercial premises.
Of this company – actually created by Febrer – Alfonso Grau holds 90% of the share capital and the rest of the share capital is divided equally between his daughters. From the study of the accounts between 2002 and 2014, it emerges that Grau made cash deposits into the accounts of his immediate family, always for amounts that, due to their size, were not subject to financial or administrative control – less than 3,000 euros.
The Million Dollar Commission
Grau’s daughter, married to the American, had an account in the United States that, according to the judge, was used by Febrer to pay Grau a commission of one million euros. The aim was for the former deputy mayor to promote an urban planning operation for the company Mediterranean integrated actions in which one of the businessman’s companies, Construcciones Valencia Constitución SL, participated, along with three other companies.
The commission to be collected was agreed in November 2006 and, in order to make it effective, Alfonso Grau provided Febrer with the method of payment of said commission by providing him with the details of the bank account held by his daughter and son-in-law in the United States. However, as the investigation revealed, the data relating to this account had already been provided to him by Grau two years earlier in the context of another real estate transaction in which he had also participated.
The Azud case investigates alleged “bites” in exchange for public works contracts awarded by the Valencia City Council at the time of the former PP mayor, Rita Barberá, by contracting companies. Specifically, the case is being prosecuted for the crimes of money laundering, cheating, influence peddling and falsification of documents.
Another account in France
On the other hand, the president of the court points out that Grau tried to open an account in France to deposit 300,000 euros by providing a bank certificate that turned out to be false. In this resolution, it is indicated that the former vice-mayor had opened three safes in different banking entities that were canceled in 2015, due to his legal problems. His two daughters, “collaborators in money laundering”, were authorized to do so.
And this fact was revealed, as he noted in his writings, through a European Investigation Order (Letter Rogatory) issued to France in July 2021. He also noted that Alfonso Grau Alonso had tried to open a bank account in France, designating his daughter as the owner, where he intended to deposit the sum of 300,000 euros.
This deposit did not take place because they wanted to justify the legal origin of the funds that were going to be deposited with a certificate from a bank that turned out to be “false”. The reason given by the girl to open the account, according to a communication from the bank, was the “risk of the electoral result”, which gave rise to the transmission of information due to alleged criminal activities to the French intelligence services, who reported it to the Spanish.
