Alfonso Grau will avoid prison if he pays 5,400 euros for accepting high-end watches

VALENCIA, 16 Dec. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The former first deputy mayor of Valencia in the government of Rita Barberá, the 'popular' Alfonso Grau, will avoid imprisonment for accepting high-end watches from a businessman who signed 16 contracts with the City Council between 2006 and 2015 if pay 5,400 euros in court.

Grau was initially sentenced by the Valencia Court to four years in prison for bribery and money laundering. However, the Supreme Court subsequently reduced the sentence to nine months as the crime of money laundering was not proven. The same sentence was imposed on the businessman Urbano Catalán, head of Transvia and Viajes Privilege.

To execute the sentence, the second section of the Provincial Court of Valencia has agreed in two orders, advanced by Las Provincias, that Grau and Catalán do not go to prison.

In the case of Grau, investigated in the procedure known as Azud, the suspension is granted for a period of two years provided that during the same period he does not commit a crime again and pays a fine of 5,400 euros. The prisoner must also communicate any change of address.

Regarding Urbano Catalán, the suspension of the execution of the sentence for two years is subject to the payment of a fine of 10,800 euros and that he does not reoffend within the same period.

In both cases, the court has taken into account to condition the suspension of the sentences of both prisoners the "significance of the charges" that Grau held, the value of the objects (watches) offered and accepted, the circumstance that is not of a single fact, that this type of infraction "affects the confidence of citizens in the proper functioning of the Administration", as well as the "effect not only on the citizenry as a whole, but also on other political/administrative officials and other members of the Public Administration.

The fines imposed, therefore, according to the Court, are in accordance with the facts of the trial and the economic capacity of each defendant. Both resolutions have already been notified to the convicts themselves and may be the subject of an appeal.

Initially, Grau was sentenced in June 2019 by the Valencia Court, in a sentence ratified by the TSJCV, to four years in prison for one crime of bribery and another of money laundering.

The court considered it proven that the politician received in December 2010 and the same month of 2011, in view of the public office he held, two luxury watches that had been given to him by the businessman Urbano Catalán, supplier of the City Council and agent of several companies dedicated to the urban and interurban transport that had signed a total of 16 contracts with the Valencian council.

The then first deputy mayor of Valencia exchanged the two watches at the jewelry store where they had been purchased by the businessman for others of greater value and paid the difference in cash to "hide the illicit origin" of the gifts, said the room.

The convicted person appealed the resolution to the Supreme Court, which annulled the sentence as the perpetrator of a money laundering crime for which he was sentenced to three years and three months in prison and left the sentence in nine months in prison for bribery.

The High Court understood that the prosecution had not provided evidence to exclude Grau from changing the watches for more expensive ones to launder them, but rather that he could have done so to "benefit from bribery to obtain models for which he was most interested."