Francisco Camps says he left the Valencia regional premier’s office with the same amount of money in his bank account he had when he first arrived in 2003.
The now-absolved Partido Popular (PP) member gave his first interview on Monday night after his acquittal last week in the so-called “suit-gate” case. He appeared on Intereconomia’s PP-leaning political talk show El gato al agua (The cat in the water) where he defended his administration, including the €17.6 billion debt Valencia owed at the end of 2010. Camps says that many politicians who come to office leave with massive bank accounts – that wasn’t his case. He challenged anyone, including prosecutors, to look at his own personal wealth to see if he received one euro more than he was entitled to when he resigned last July following his indictment on charges that he received some €14,000 worth of dress suits from a group of corrupt businessmen popularly known as the Gürtel network.
A jury acquitted Camps and the former PP secretary general in Valencia, Ricardo Costa, last Wednesday after they deliberated for more than two days over the allegations that both men received fine gifts from the Gürtel group as improper bribes, which by law do not correspond with their public office duties. It was an almost evenly split decision – a five-to-four verdict in favour of Camps and Costa. Despite the jury’s decision, the evidence was there. There were receipts from men’s suit shops that had been altered; communications among those in the Gürtel network that demonstrated Camps and Costa were getting gifts from the suspects involved in the massive public corruption case; testimony from tailor José Tomás affirming that Camps never paid for his own suits; and taped telephone conversations between Costa and Gürtel’s alleged point man in Valencia, Álvaro Pérez, discussing gifts and other favours. What the five people on that jury saw that the rest of the country didn’t see will remain secret for now. Jurors in Spain are not allowed to give interviews or even be publicly identified. What we do know was that there were certain members on that panel who seemed disinterested in the case and, for the most part, paid little attention to the testimony and evidence presented by prosecutors. According to El País reporters who sat in that courtroom, at least two men – both on the front row – took more notes during the defence’s arguments rather than the prosecution’s presentation.
It appears now there will be an appeal by prosecutors, who will demand a bench trial. The problem with holding a jury trial in Camps’ own home region is the lack of impartiality. There are many people who choose not to convict one of their own for the sake of dignity: they prefer not to taint the good name of their region or jurisdiction by condemning one of their own. The Partido Popular has always had sweeping victories in Valencia for the past 16 years; there should have been a change of venue in the trial. There was no way – both the defence and prosecution could have argued – that Camps and Costa would have gotten a fair trial just based on the publicity in the case.
Jury trials in many countries are fair and are made available to defendants because they are the most unprejudiced way to determine a person’s innocence or guilt. But it is true that in many nations, such as Spain, the public is pretty politicised and there can be difficulties in finding impartial people to sit on a jury. Under common law, candidates called to serve are put through the “voir dire” process where prosecutors and the defence attorneys can single out and even object to certain people because of their political beliefs, prior knowledge about the case, and even their religious backgrounds. There is no doubt that the voir dire process in Spain isn’t one of the strongest points in the nation’s judicial system.
After the acquittals, newspaper columnists began screaming for what they called “a professional trial” (in other words, a bench trial) rather than a jury trial. The suit-gate case isn’t over for Camps and Costa nor are there legal problems. There is now surmounting evidence that the Gürtel network provided the PP in Valencia with tons of money in illegal contributions over the years before the alleged conspiracy was broken in 2009. Prosecutors no doubt will get a second chance at putting both men back in dock. Double jeopardy, you might ask? Perhaps not. In an archaic legal structure such as Spain’s judicial system, anything is possible.
Written by Martin Delfin, Martin writes for the English language version of El Pais
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