• Convictions: ERE ruling: six years in jail for Griñán and nine years of disqualification for Chaves
  • The figures.The biggest plot of corruption in Democracy: 679,412,179.09 euros of money defrauded
  • Timeline: The biggest cause of open corruption in Spain
  • Journalism: This is how EL MUNDO uncovered the biggest case of corruption

The case of the ERE is not exhausted with the sentence that the Court of Seville announced on Tuesday, even when the Supreme Court decides on it if, as announced, the convicted appeal. In fact, the case tried is only one of the more than 200 that derive from the thorough investigation initiated by Judge Mercedes Alaya in the Court of Instruction No. 6 of Seville of which she was the holder.

The total number of lawsuits that are still pending is unknown, since the investigation will determine which cases end in prosecution and which others are filed by prescription or simply by absence of evidence of crime.

That long rosary of trials to be held is the result of a decision by Judge María Núñez Bolaños -which replaced Alaya at the head of the court-, who, at the request of the Prosecutor's Office, cut the macrocause to supposedly expedite the lines of work that were more advanced and, therefore, prevent research from straining out given its complexity and magnitude.

However, that decision has also had other undesirable consequences for the clarification of the facts, but which, in some way, may benefit some defendants. To begin with, by separating the political piece - the one already judged - from the rest, the former senior officials of the Board have avoided mixing with the most sordid face of the plot and sitting on the bench with its main protagonists, such as Juan Francisco Trujillo , the That he was a driver of the former Director General of Labor, Javier Guerrero , who confessed to having bought cocaine and paid for parties from his boss with the illegal aid he received through a fictitious company.

Nor has Juan Lanzas , a former trade unionist and ERE achiever, who was hiding 82,000 euros in a mattress sitting on the bench. All these scabrous details, in addition to the overcommissions paid and allegedly diverted to tax havens, will be in successive trials as the investigation closes the open cases.

In addition, there is some legal controversy over whether defendants already tried can be subjected to other similar procedures. So that the chopping can mean, for example, that former counselor Antonio Fernández avoids the accusation in other parts of the macrocause. This has been resolved by the Hearing, for the moment.

During the trial held at the Audience of Seville, it was the prosecutor Juan Enrique Egocheaga who spoke that 270 trials could be pending, one for each of the irregular grants granted through the reptile fund . At the moment, there are 182 previous proceedings initiated since 2016.

And to the difficulty of addressing such a high volume of prosecutions is added that the work of Judge Bolaños has been seriously questioned by the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor , to the point that the magistrate is being investigated by the General Council of the Judiciary ( CGPJ ) for delay the instruction of both the ERE macrocause and other causes of corruption of the Socialist governments of the Board ( Avales case and Idea case ).

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Know more

  • ERE statement
  • Justice
  • Andalusia
  • Corruption
  • PSOE
  • Manuel Chaves
  • José Antonio Griñán

Politics Ferraz limits the responsibility of the ERE to the Andalusian PSOE: "They are facts outside the current Government"

Corruption The least neat face of the ERE case: Cocaine, recordings and "money to roast a cow"

Corruption The ERE ruling will be known next Tuesday