Eight years and eight months of the ERE

• Courts.The ERE trial, in five keys
• Pesquisas 'Case ERE', the macrocause of the more than 250 trials
• Instruction: Once again the judge of the 'ERE case' denounced for "paralyzing" the corruption cases of the PSOE
• Case ERE. Lawyers of former positions of the PSOE support Judge Núñez, denounced for delaying the causes of corruption

On January 9, 2011 the judge of Seville Mercedes Alaya opened the previous proceedings number 174/2011, which gave rise to the ERE case. This is the biggest cause of corruption ever opened in the country, which revealed the alleged plot designed by the dome of the Andalusian Government of the PSOE to sustain its own power through an arbitrary distribution of millionaire funds in exchange for loyalties and favors . This Monday marks eight years and eight months of the beginning of the judicial investigations with an eye on the judgment that the Court of Seville must issue.

The judicial decision must analyze a decade of successive socialist governments in Andalusia that granted, according to the Prosecutor's account, almost 800 million euros without control and, in many cases, without more legal support than the personal decision of a specific public office between 2000 and 2010. All this, for the benefit of companies linked, more or less directly, to the PSOE. In theory, the public aid of the Ministry of Employment was aimed at companies in crisis. But it was not like that.

The ERE case took the political career of socialist referents like Manuel Chaves and José Antonio Griñán. The two former presidents of the Junta de Andalucía have sat on the bench of the defendants, along with six former councilors and 13 former senior officials of their governments, in the known as the main piece of the ERE, a macrocause that had to be broken in 270 different causes, one for each irregular aid granted by the Board from the reptile fund .

Chaves and Griñán face a conviction of disqualification for prevarication , but on the second also the petition of conviction of the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office for six years in prison for continued embezzlement . Eight years of jail and 30 years of disqualification face former Labor Directors Javier Guerrero and Juan Márquez ; and former directors José Antonio Viera, Antonio Fernández and Francisco Vallejo .

These 21 former senior officials of the Andalusian Government of the PSOE stage now await the sentence to be issued by the Audience of Seville. The trial lasted for a year during 152 sessions in which 120 witnesses testified. It ended on December 17, 2018. Almost nine months ago.

According to sources consulted by EL MUNDO, the magistrate who must write the sentence, Juan Antonio Calle Peña , has been cloistered for months, almost like a closing monk, dedicated entirely to the ruling of the ERE case. He has wanted so much to isolate himself from the environment and possible distractions that it is rare to see him in his office of the Audience. The work has taken him to a municipality in the province of Seville where he dissects the case tirelessly.

This judge has a special release authorized by the Superior Court of Justice of Andalusia (TSJA) until the end of October to write the judgment of the ERE. This release could be extended if, when the date arrives, Calle Peña has not yet finished its work. The other two magistrates who were part of the court that prosecuted this case at the Hearing were also released until the end of last June.

At the moment, there is no specific official date for the ERE ruling to be known. However, the sources consulted by this newspaper assume that the sentence will be made public in the fall.

There are elements that could distort these forecasts, such as the general elections , if they are finally repeated on November 10 before the inability of the acting Government of Pedro Sánchez to reach agreements with United We can or other political formations for the investiture. There is an unwritten rule in Justice that seeks not to interfere with electoral processes. If there were elections, the sentence could be delayed. It is a hypothesis.

In favor of the decision being made public as soon as possible, the collapse suffered by the Audience of Seville, where the release of a single magistrate is noticeable and much when it comes to squaring calendars and dates of trials that the rest of the judges must distribute not counting Peña Street.

What the sources consulted are clear about is that the ruling of the main piece of the ERE will mark the course of what may happen with the other 270 cases, many of them still unopened, as the prosecutor revealed during the trial against the 21 former senior officials of the Andalusian Government. In 2015, with the new instructive judge María Núñez Bolaños , the macrocause was divided into 187 pieces, of which a few months ago 146 were alive, after 36 files and five were raised to the Court to hold trial.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

• PSOE
• Seville
• Manuel Chaves
• United We Can
• Pedro Sanchez
• Mercedes Alaya
• José Antonio Griñán
• THE WORLD
• Andalusia
• ERE case
• Corruption

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