Arrested the sub-delegate of the Government in Valencia, Rafael Rubio, and the former deputy mayor of the PP, Alfonso Grau, for charging commissions
Until today the deputy delegate of the Government in the Valencian Community, the socialist Rafael Rubio, and the one who was the right-hand man of the mayor of Valencia Rita Barberá and deputy mayor with the PP, Alfonso Grau, have been arrested this Thursday morning in the framework of an operation against a collection scheme for alleged urban commissions between 1999 and 2011, carried out by the Central Operational Unit (UCO) of the Civil Guard. Sources from the Government delegation and close to the investigation have confirmed to EL PAÍS the arrest of Rubio at his home for alleged crimes committed when he was a councilor for the PSPV-PSOE. Also Grau's.
The one baptized as Operation Hades (name of the Greek god of the underworld) has so far resulted in the arrest of 14 people. The new investigations, led by the Investigating Court 13 of Valencia, are part of a broader investigation, the Azud case, whose main defendant is the former brother-in-law of Barberá, José María Corbín, who was already arrested in 2019 by the same case. About 40 records have been made and the vast majority of arrests have occurred in the Valencian Community, but also in other autonomous communities. The summary is under secret.
Among those detained is also the construction businessman Jaime María Febrer, who would be one of the vault keys of the case, a plot of commissions in exchange for awards on public land for public housing promotions, according to what Okdiario has advanced this morning. The lawyer José Luis Vera has also been arrested, who served as legal director of the public company of the Provincial Council of Valencia, Imelsa, which was closed after the corruption scandals, and now held the same position in his heir, Divalterra, a company whose closure has also been announced.
The Central Operational Unit has completed around 4:10 p.m. the search in the house of the former Government delegate, who has left the house detained and guarded by the agents, hiding his face inside the car. The search at this address has lasted for about eight hours and a locksmith has participated in it to open a safe. Rubio has left the building in a car without a police badge and from the garage, apparently without handcuffs.
Along with him, about ten UCO agents have left the house in three vehicles, one of them with a covered license plate, which is expected to now go to a Civil Guard unit, probably the Provincial Command, according to sources from the investigation.
Alfonso Grau has been charged in other investigations during the 24-year mandate of Barberá, who died five years ago, as the so-called smurfing, a form of whitewashing for which most of the members who were part of the PP municipal group are being investigated. This is a separate piece of the Taula case. Grau, 80, is a political veteran of the Valencian PP who resigned from his post in March 2015, just a few months before the local elections, due to his prosecution in the Nóos case, from which he was later acquitted. Since then, his name has only come out through judicial investigations into his management. At the beginning of 2020, the Superior Court of Justice of the Valencian Community (TSJCV) confirmed a four-year prison sentence for accepting luxury watches from a businessman, a local dealer.
For his part, Rubio, 61, is also being investigated for acts committed during his time as a provincial deputy of the Valencia Provincial Council, in a separate piece of the Taula case for the alleged irregular hiring of (false) zombie workers, who did not They went to his post. He has been the only socialist politician investigated among more than twenty PP charges, headed by the former president of the Provincial Council, Alfonso Rus.
Shortly after Rubio's arrest was known, the Government delegate in the Valencian Community, Gloria Calero, has dismissed him from his post, according to the institution in a statement. The PSPV-PSOE has suspended militancy and has opened a file as soon as the judicial operation became known.
A history of the party
Rafael Rubio, a veteran of the party in the city of Valencia, was a candidate for mayor for the PSPV-PSOE in 2003 and won 12 councilors in a term in which the PP of the late Rita Barberá retained the absolute majority. The detainee was spokesman for the next four years and although he continued on the 2007 socialist electoral list, it was Carmen Alborch who headed the candidacy. Shortly after, he was in charge of the spokesperson for the socialist group in the Valencia Provincial Council under the presidency of the popular Alfonso Rus. Before being appointed deputy delegate of the Government, he served as coordinator of Urban Planning in the Valencia City Council, governed by a coalition formed by Compromís and PSPV-PSOE since 2015 (until 2019, Unides Podem was also a Government partner). In the opposition, he was very critical of Grau and some urban operations, such as the exchange of some houses in Cabanyal for a plot of land that, according to what the then mayor denounced in 2005, benefited Construccion Valencia Constitución SL, whose owner was the businessman arrested today.
Rubio's arrest has caused great shock and surprise within the Valencian socialists. A municipal official, he is a veteran politician who has served as the party's plumber and has always tried to seek consensus between the different groups within the party. However, if he has had to opt for a candidate in the internal battles, he has done so for the current Secretary of Organization of the PSOE and Minister of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda, José Luis Ábalos. Precisely, the current Government delegate in the Valencian Community, Gloria Calero, is a person that Ábalos fully trusts. It was she who appointed Rubio sub-delegate in Valencia and who has dismissed him shortly after the news of his arrest broke.
This noon, Calero stated that Rubio's dismissal as sub-delegate of the Government in Valencia has occurred "automatically" after his arrest and because they could not "consent that events that occurred so long ago could affect the normal functioning of the Delegation of the government".
“We found out at eight in the morning of what happened. I have automatically proceeded to dismiss the Government delegate, starting this morning at nine. Justice will follow its path, as it cannot be otherwise. We respect the judicial procedure and we will wait, but we could not allow that events that occurred so long ago, investigated since 2005, could affect the normal functioning of the Government Delegation”, Calero declared to the media.
The Minister of Transport, José Luis Ábalos, has expressed his “alarm and surprise” late in the afternoon in Burgos at the arrest of Rafael Rubio, who was his substitute at the head of the local secretariat of the PSOE in Valencia. journalists, has recognized that Rubio was charged when he was appointed deputy delegate of the Government, although it was a different matter for a case of alleged embezzlement. He has pointed out that he does not value the action of Justice, since "if someone is arrested, it will surely be because there is sufficient grounds."
The Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, has pointed out in Seville, regarding the arrest of the sub-delegate of the Government in Valencia: “This is the greatness of democracy”. The minister has asked that justice be allowed to act and has recalled the presumption of innocence. The Valencian president, the socialist Ximo Puig, has also done so, who has considered that "both from the institutional point of view and from the party, the appropriate decisions have been made."
The mayor of Valencia, Joan Ribó (Compromís), has assured that he sees a "close relationship" between the Azud case, which has so far resulted in 14 arrests, with the urban planning operation for the purchase of land in the surroundings of the circuit of the Formula 1, which were included in the PAI del Grau, and which he denounced in October 2014 when he was the municipal spokesman for Compromís in the town hall.
