The First Chamber of the Constitutional Court concludes that the Court of Instruction number 8 of Valencia that investigates the so-called Erial case “violated the right to freedom and defense” of one of the main defendants. It maintains that the imprisonment of Francisco Grau, considered the financial mastermind of former Valencian president Eduardo Zaplana, did not comply with the law by not allowing him access to essential elements of the case in order to defend himself.
This pronouncement is especially relevant since the arrest warrant issued against Grau is practically identical to that of the former popular minister who, however, did not appeal to the Constitutional Court for his imprisonment. Grau and Zaplana remained in provisional prison for the same period of time accused of concocting a plot to collect and launder funds from commissions and are currently awaiting trial.
The court assures that the investigator of the case “did not respect the legal guarantee of access to the essential elements of the proceedings to challenge the pretrial detention.” A question, she emphasizes, “essential for a defense against the precautionary deprivation of liberty.” Therefore, she argues that “the right to personal liberty has been violated by maintaining the prison without observance of the manner provided in the law.” In this way, she considers the records confirming Grau’s preventive detention to be “null” at the same time that she deals a harsh legal reproach to the investigation of the Erial case.
The Constitutional Prosecutor’s Office has supported this decision on the grounds that “the right of access to the essential proceedings to challenge the precautionary measure of deprivation of liberty cannot be limited by the declaration of secrecy of the proceedings”. In this line, he considers that “the right” of Grau to “receive knowledge of the essentials in the proceedings to challenge the agreed provisional measure of detention has been injured, without prejudice to the respect due to secrecy.”
This is the first judicial pronouncement that severely questions the instruction that led Zaplana to jail, who was admitted despite the fact that forensics ruled that his life was in danger because he was sick with leukemia. Parallel to the fact that the Constitutional Prosecutor’s Office considers that illegalities have been committed in the investigation, the Valencia Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office requests high prison sentences against the former president of the Generalitat and some of his former collaborators.
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