It indicates that the recordings were on an external disk of the computer that, after transferring them to a pen drive, he threw away
VALENCIA, 28 Feb. (EUROPA PRESS) –
Mariano López, ex-father-in-law of Imelsa’s former manager Marcos Benavent, self-described as a ‘money junkie’, has once again denied any type of manipulation in the recordings that he delivered to the Prosecutor’s Office and that originated the Imelsa case and has indicated that he acted in that way to go against Benavent after he separated from his daughter at the end of 2019.
López has pronounced himself like this, as a witness, in the trial that is being followed in the Hearing for parts B and F of the Imelsa case, which has 25 defendants, including the former president of the Provincial Council and the PP Alfonso Rus -who He was also mayor of Xàtiva (Valencia), the former regional Secretary of Education and former CEO of Ciegsa Máximo Caturla, the former sub-delegate of the Government in Valencia Rafael Rubio and the former manager of Imelsa and self-described ‘money junkie’ Marcos Benavent.
The witness has appeared before the court to explain the origin of the audios, which reached the Prosecutor’s Office in 2014 and contained ten hours of recordings that Benavent had supposedly made to PP charges and in which commissions were discussed in exchange for public awards and money distributions. These recordings have been questioned by the defenses and they use them to request the annulment of the procedure.
López has explained that he knew about the existence of the recordings because Benavent himself told him, something that did not seem “at all normal” to him, and he has affirmed that, once he separated from his daughter, he checked the computer that was in a country house that the ex-manager also attended in the summer in case there was anything he could use against him. Asked about this house, he has stated that he donated it to his daughter in 2009 when she had not yet separated from Benavent.
Checking the computer, he realized that the recordings were on a permanent external hard drive that was “starting to fail”: “I realized that the hard drive was failing and before it was lost what was there, thinking that it could have some document that could be used against Benavent, I began to save all that”, he said. Regarding the hard drive, he added that his ex-son-in-law left it there: “I imagine he wouldn’t even remember it because it malfunctioned and he never asked me (…) I was not authorized to see the hard drive or to extract the information,” he clarified. .
“I saved what I could and transferred it to a memory stick –pen drive–. I saw the audios and listened to a few and what I heard seemed relevant to me,” he added. He then threw the hard drive in the trash although he doesn’t remember the exact moment. “He went to the trash,” she has commented.
After some time, the witness has stated that he contacted an acquaintance of his and the latter recommended that he speak with the former deputy and current councilor Rosa Pérez. So, they stayed one day and he talked to her to tell her about her recordings, “and she didn’t believe it.” Another day they met in Catarroja and he played the audios, which Pérez later recorded on her computer with her consent.
“If Rosa Pérez implicated him, I was satisfied. I wanted him to be denounced. I knew there were those recordings, I looked for them and the objective was for Rosa or the Prosecutor’s Office to denounce him,” he summarized.
These recordings were later provided by Rosa Pérez to the Prosecutor’s Office on a pen drive, and the witness was also required to have the pen drive and the computer, “not the hard drive,” he pointed out. Initially they did not ask her about the device in which the recordings were until she made her formal appearance and she stated that they were on the external disk. “And I don’t remember if it was the prosecutor or the UCO that told me to forget about it and focus on the computer,” she pointed out.
On the other hand, in the session on Tuesday, the former vice-president of the Valencia Provincial Council, Juan José Medina, who supposedly had one of the defendants in the proceedings, Juan Antonio Sanz Núñez, as an adviser, appeared as a witness. He has indicated that he worked for Imelsa but was in the Provincial Council area, although he has not been able to specify if he was his adviser: “I do not know but he collaborated with me on many issues and carried out activities,” he stated.
In this regard, he has indicated that he spoke with the defendant in the halls of the provincial corporation and told him that he had issues with social networks. He also saw him on occasion at institutional acts, he has pointed out. “I saw him every day that he went to the Provincial Council, he was at a table. I knew the PP advisers but I am not sure if he was my adviser or not,” he insisted.
During the day on Tuesday, several witnesses proposed by the defense of the defendant Francisco José Antequera, who appeared in Imelsa as an adviser to Emilio Llopis, former Rus chief of staff, also testified.
Among them, a Provincial Council official who worked as an administrator with the Provincial Council advisory group between 2012 and 2015 has appeared before the court. She explained that she carried out her work in a large room and her table was next to that of Antequera.
He has indicated that Antequera was assigned a permanent position with computer equipment, “like all those who worked there,” he stated. Likewise, he has indicated that he went to work every day and his hours were from 8 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. or 3 p.m. He has asserted that no advisor signed, “only officials” and that Antequera was in charge of the Camp de Morvedre region and contacted mayors to inform them of aid and subsidies.
Another witness, also an official in the Diputación since the year 2000, has agreed with his partner and has assured that Antequera had a table in the office and a computer, and that he went to work. “For me he was like another adviser,” he asserted.
