Anti-Fraud Agency visits PPCV headquarters over Llorca billboards and Generalitat tax cuts

The Anti-Fraud Agency of the Valencian Community visited the PPCV headquarters to gather information about the advertising billboards from the Generalitat and the party. The PP claims the investigation is closed, but Socialist MP Mercedes Caballero asserts that the case remains open.

According to Levante-EMV, staff from the Agency for the Prevention and Fight against Fraud and Corruption of the Valencian Community (Avaf) went to the regional headquarters of the PPCV on Wednesday. The aim was to request information regarding the campaigns that the Generalitat and the party launched simultaneously on outdoor billboards to promote the tax cuts approved by the Consell, which in many cases appeared side by side with the image of president Juanfran Pérez Llorca.

The opposition has denounced that this mix of government action and party propaganda creates confusion and violates the law. In contrast, the Valencian PP downplays the visit and points out that the investigation, opened in May following an anonymous complaint, would already be closed by the agency.

However, information verified by the newspaper indicates otherwise: from two different sources, the investigations are still ongoing. The visit to the popular headquarters also suggests that the focus is no longer solely on the Generalitat, but now includes the party as well, something that had not happened until now.

The campaign was published in April, just before the income tax campaign. Several areas of Valencia woke up to institutional advertising billboards, paid for with public money, reminding citizens of the various tax deductions. Alongside many of these, PPCV billboards were placed with the slogan "We deliver by lowering taxes" and the tagline "Juanfran president".

The left argues that this signage violates the Valencian institutional advertising law. Its article 4.3 states that institutional advertising must be:

"clearly distinguished from the propaganda of political parties, both in content and in the aesthetics used"

Point 5 of the same regulation also prohibits partisan institutional advertising communication.

The Anti-Fraud Agency opened the investigation in July and requested information from the Generalitat over the summer, specifically from the second vice-presidency, responsible for institutional advertising led by Pepe Díez. Following these initial inquiries, the agency, chaired by Eduardo Beut, issued a provisional report. In it, it did not consider it "sufficiently substantiated" that the law had been violated "deliberately", and dismissed the notion of "deliberate coordination" between the Consell and the PPCV.

Regional MP Mercedes Caballero was at the agency's headquarters on October 19 and had access to the case file. According to her statements, the procedure:

"is not closed"

For the reader, the case remains open until the agency issues a definitive report, which will determine whether the mix of institutional and party advertising results in a sanction or is archived.