The businessman Juan Enrique Adell Bover has testified this Wednesday before the head of the Investigating Court number 4 of Valencia in an open case for an alleged crime of false documents and fraud in the subsidies granted to his family's audiovisual production companies, in which he also The brother of the president of the Generalitat Valenciana Ximo Puig appears as accused.
The Prosecutor's Office requested the declaration of Adell Bover as an investigator as an applicant for the public aid received by Canal Maestrat -which has recently claimed bankruptcy-, for the invoices whose payment could not be accredited or those whose relationship with the activity of the companies could not be determined. He is also accused of falsifying payroll, to obtain subsidies through another production company called Kriol Producciones.
The Civil Guard detected up to four types of irregularities in the 1.2 million that these merchants, together with those managed by Francis Puig -Comunicacions dels Ports and Mas Mut Produccions- received between 2015 and 2018 from the Valencian, Catalan and Aragonese governments, in different calls, for the promotion of the own language or youth employment. It so happens that Comunicacions dels Ports and Canal Maestrat were fined 43,000 euros by the Commission for the Defense of Competition for agreeing on prices to win a public tender to provide services in Castellón to the regional television station À Punt.
Legal sources have explained to ABC that, as Puig already did in his appearance before the judge this Monday, Adell Bover has affirmed that it is the Generalitat that should have decided whether to allocate to the subsidies the invoices that a report from the Crime Unit Economics of the Judicial Police questions and has admitted that, unlike the brother of the regional president, he does have seven open procedures for the reimbursement of public aid.
During almost three hours of appearance, according to his lawyer Carmen Gallego, "it has been clarified that there is no false billing in any sense" nor "any type of corporate relationship with the Francis Puig companies." The lawyer has stressed that they will continue to collaborate and provide more documentation "to clear up all the doubts" of the Prosecutor's Office, while stressing that, of the invoices collected from the four years under magnification, only 0.01% keep some type relationship -which is "almost non-existent"- with Puig's production companies, because their clients collaborate more with other companies.
Adell Bover has also defended before the judge that if the same invoice is presented in the Generalitat Valenciana and in the Catalan it is because the bases allow it. Pending the audits requested from the Intervention of both regional administrations, the defendant's defense has already submitted a document at the time justifying that the amounts that the Civil Guard indicates - "without any conclusion" - do not exceed the threshold of 120,000 euros for It is considered subsidies fraud.
Precisely, the main issue to resolve is whether the amount allegedly defrauded exceeds that figure so that the process is followed by criminal means or resolved, in the event that irregularities are proven, with an administrative sanction. The case, in which the director of Linguistic Policy of the Generalitat Valenciana, Rubén Trenzano, is also charged, started in 2019 from a complaint by the Popular Party, which exercises the private prosecution, to which Adell Bover did not want to respond during the session .
