- Timeline: Eight years of investigation and trial of the biggest corruption case in democracy
- Government.The ERE ruling impacts the PSOE in full negotiation of the Executive
- Scandal: The dirtiest face of the 'ERE case': cocaine, eaters and other excesses
The ERE investigation, the biggest corruption case in Spanish democracy, has been extended for more than a decade and EL MUNDO has played a central role in the difficult task of unraveling the ins and outs of the client network woven by the PSOE in Andalusia, on which judgment will finally be issued today.
Of the many cases of corruption that have taken place in Andalusia in recent decades, the investigation that has required the most continuous and exhaustive work has undoubtedly been the one that has ended the imputation of former presidents of the Junta de Andalucía, Manuel Chaves and José Antonio Griñán , and of up to twenty positions at the highest level of successive Andalusian governments. The ERE case has for years been a recurring issue in the headlines of EL MUNDO, which conscientiously accompanied the instruction that Judge Mercedes Alaya was developing.
The investigation took its first steps when the PP filed in 2009 a complaint in court for the collection of commissions in the public company Mercasevilla . From the first moment it became clear that this denunciation constituted a case of exceptional political and journalistic relevance, and it is still ironic that the one who was later known as the ERE achiever , Juan Lanzas , was the one who somehow put the focus of EL MUNDO's attention in the employment regulation files of companies supposedly in crisis, generously subsidized by the Junta de Andalucía.
The name of Juan Lanzas, former UGT trade unionist, was cited from the outset as one of the key people in the negotiation of the Mercasevilla management with the entrepreneurs of the La Raza group, who had the courage to record the meetings in which a commission was demanded in exchange for being awarded the management of a hospitality school under the Mercasevilla umbrella, the firm responsible for the central Seville market.
At the time that THE WORLD knew the name of Spears, he called the trade unionist to obtain his version of the facts. He wanted to downplay the matter. Putting himself in the role of a simple, well-informed witness, he gave the key: "Look, Mercasevilla has caught his fingers in the ERE that he has negotiated with his workers; so he is being forced to seek financing anywhere," he came to say. That is, the commission requested by the directors of the company was not for the PSOE or for the personal enrichment of the applicants, but to cover the hole generated by the generous retirement agreed. That was meant to make us believe Spears. But his insistence that the key was in the ERE made us investigate in that line.
The news about the lack of control in the funds destined for the subsidized EREs and the legal formulas that the Board had devised to avoid the controls began to be published. Alaya's determination was key in the judicial investigation and it is impossible to know what would have happened to the case without her at the head of the Court of Instruction number 6 of Seville . The former Director General of Labor, Francisco Javier Guerrero , told police on December 21, 2010 that the Board had a "reptile fund" to pay early retirements and aid to companies in crisis. The judge opened on January 19, 2011 the previous proceedings that would give rise to the ERE case . From there, the scandal was on the rise: figures of more and more astronomical embezzled money, high charges charged, responsible for the Ministry of Labor entering prison, reptile funds in the epicenter of the Andalusian Government and all the string of elements Embarrassing that have characterized this scandal.
Especially impressive was on September 15, 2016, the day when the Prosecutor's Office estimated at 741 million euros the money used by the Andalusian PSOE to defray its clientele network through the illegal ERE. The amount was very high and far exceeded the money embezzled in other cases of corruption, including some that caused the filing of a motion of censure and the formation of the current Government.
In the end, and despite all the accusations that the PSOE poured at the time against this newspaper for publishing the case, two former presidents of the Board and the PSOE (Chaves and Griñán), former Minister Magdalena Álvarez and the great plumber of Andalusian socialism, Gaspar Zarrías . All of them, and especially the first two, always received the support of their party, from that of their successor Susana Díaz to that of the current president of the acting Government, Pedro Sánchez . For the History of Spain, however, the sentence will be known this Tuesday, November 19.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
Know more- PSOE
- Andalusia
- Pedro Sanchez
- Seville
- Susana Díaz
- UGT
- PP
- Manuel Chaves
- José Antonio Griñán
- ERE case
- ERE statement
Public funds The Board recovers 10 years later the 13.8 million that Manuel Chaves gave to his daughter's company
Corruption The ERE ruling will be known next Tuesday
Andalusia ERE complicate the PSOE negotiations