The bags and a wine that Rita Barberá received from the cleaning contract cost 7,400 euros

The Civil Guard has located a series of documents that put figures on the gifts received by Rita Barberá, who died in November 2016, in the alleged corruption plot of the Azud case, which investigates 20 years of looting by PP and PSOE in the Valencian Community .

The former mayor of Valencia would have received gifts from a City Council contract for four years that “due to their value could exceed generally accepted social uses,” according to this documentation.

The gifts were delivered between 2004 and 2008 to various officials and public officials. The agents located in the registry carried out in the Acciona business group a series of documents that link the delivery of these gifts with their “commercial priorities”.

[Treasury reveals that Rita Barberá's brother-in-law won the lottery twice in three years: €420,000 in total]

Each public office received a gift based on their responsibility. Between 2004 and 2008, “Rita Barberá would have been the recipient of gifts” whose value totals 7,600 euros, according to the Civil Guard.

In 2004, they gave Barberá a Louis Vuitton bag valued at 1,850 euros.. A year later, a varied batch of the firm for 1,550 euros and in 2006 a “suitcase and purse set” of the same brand.

During Christmas 2007, he received a Pingus 2001, a red wine from Ribera del Duero, the amount of which amounted to 1,520 euros.. In 2007 the gifts for the former mayor cost 1,000 euros and the documentation does not specify them.

The evidence appears in a new report from the Central Operative Unit (UCO) of the Civil Guard, provided to the court on April 27 and to which EL ESPAÑOL has had access, in which the investigators detail the payments made to the office to the lawyer of Diego Elum and Barberá's brother-in-law, José María Corbín.

Both are listed as being investigated after the Civil Guard discovered that they received a commission of 1.7 million euros after the award of the contract for sanitation and cleaning of the capital's sewers.

“These tables are documents made within the company that, due to their content and implications (they contain gifts for significant economic sums made to numerous public officials), are presumed to be of limited dissemination and access,” the UCO points out.

“This internal and reserved nature gives, from the police perspective, greater relevance to the fact that in these files María Rita Barberá is directly linked to Elum, up to three times and in files that are contextualized in a time frame of around four years”, explains the Civil Guard below.

In addition, “this link with Elum does not appear in any other table or for any other person included in them, appearing only in the three notes related to the mayoress.”

All this “despite the fact that in these documents, on up to four occasions, together with the mayoress, her sister and chief of staff, Asunción Barberá, appears.”

Both the sister of the PP leader and her husband and three daughters are listed as being investigated for a crime of money laundering, but it is the first time that the UCO expressly highlights the name of Rita Barberá.

Contract

On July 21, 2006, the Governing Board of the Valencia City Council awarded the UTE Saneamientos de Valencia the management contract for the cleaning and conservation service of the municipal sanitation system of Valencia.

The service was tendered for a term of 15 years, extendable for 2 more years, and a base tender budget of 129 million euros, VAT included.

Three months before the award, on April 20, 2006, a private contract was formalized with the Delum Abogados firm, represented by Diego Elum, an acquaintance of Corbín.

Through this contract, the office was entrusted with the provision of “services of a legal nature in relation to the tender for the public sanitation contract of the Valencia City Council, for an amount of 2,210,000 euros, VAT excluded”.

Most of the money went to Barberá's brother-in-law, according to the Civil Guard. “It is especially relevant the fact that José María Corbín, the ultimate recipient of the funds, was the brother-in-law of the one who at that time held the mayor's office of the City Council: María Rita Barberá,” the agents now conclude.

In fact, Diego Elum himself declared in court after being arrested that “in the agreement between the declarant and Corbín before the contract was awarded, he was weighed down by the fact that Corbín was the brother-in-law of the mayoress of Valencia and his wife was head of Mayor's Office”.

He also stated in this statement that “Corbín told him that he could help him to get the contract and for that help he demanded that the declarant pay him 2/3 of the total amount of his fees.”