The “star” evidence of the Erial case, the documents that started the case that resulted in the arrest of former Generalitat president and former Minister of Labor Eduardo Zaplana, do not contain any DNA. Experts from the biology department of the criminalistic service of the Civil Guard forwarded the expert examination of documents known as “Syrian documents” to the fourth department of the Valencian Court in order to find “hidden lophograms”. The people who used the documents may be gone. The results of the investigations were negative. No trace of anyone was found.
A conclusion that turns DNA testing into a useless expert report that neither helps nor harms Zaplana, who requested it in his defense briefing. The documents reviewed by the Civil Guard, known as the “road map” or “Syria papers”, are a blueprint for how to set up a corporate network to collect bribes allegedly paid by the Cotino family to the former minister.
This pile of typewritten papers was found by a Syrian citizen in Zaplana’s house in Plaza de la Legión Española in Valencia, and the house fell into the hands of money addict Marcos Benavent. The documents fell into the hands of the Civil Guard during a search of the office of the money addict’s first lawyer.
This road map allowed the Civil Guard UCO and the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office to take up the matter and initiate proceedings in November 2015, which resulted in the arrest of the two alleged frontmen, Eduardo Zaplana, on 22 May 2018. Splashing three members of the Cotino family and Zaplana’s successor in the Generalitat, José Luis Olivas.
finding in 2015
Aware of the importance of this document as the source of his legal problems, Zaplana’s defense twice tried to attack the validity of the road map that the money addict presented to agents in 2015, but was unsuccessful. UCO of the Civil Guard when cooperating with justice.
A collaboration that Marcos Benavent has “regretted” since 2021, which is why he often did not stop to declare that it was “illegal” to search his previous lawyer’s office without being asked. Both Marcos Benavent and his former lawyer Ramiro Blasco will testify as witnesses at the hearing of the Erial case. The first was requested by Eduardo Zaplana as a witness, and the second was offered by the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office.
On October 5, 2023, the fourth department of the Valencia Tribunal sent “a set of documents consisting of a white folder containing various documents in two transparent plastic covers” to the Criminalistic Service of the Civil Guard. The task was to examine the documents with the aim of searching for “lophoscopic, biological or genetic remains” and “comparing them with the indisputable genetic profile belonging to Eduardo Zaplana, as well as with human DNA databases managed by this department.” The Civil Guard received three examples: «A bar applied to the edges of the outer folder; with a stick applied to the edges of the outermost plastic sheath; with a bar applied to the edges of internal documents. According to an expert report submitted to the defense in the Erial case this week, none of the three were “susceptible to containing latent lophograms.” The conclusion of the expert is that “no positive result was obtained from the DNA study of the document set”, according to the Civil Guard report dated December 7.
The trial of the Erial case, in which Zaplana is tried together with fourteen people and four companies, will begin on February 1 and is expected to last until next June. Along with Zaplana, Zaplana’s successor in the Generalitat, José Luis Olivas, will also sit on the bench and will also be the former president of the Consell and the former minister’s closest circle. A 19-year prison sentence is requested for Zaplana.