• Corruption in the PSOE. Judgment of the ERE: The Board established an "absolute lack of control" to distribute 680 million in aid
  • Courts: ERE ruling: six years in jail for José Antonio Griñán and nine years for disqualification for Chaves
  • Corruption: The least neat face of the ERE case: Cocaine, recordings and "money to roast a cow"

The 679,432,179.09 euros that the previous Andalusian socialist governments embezzled for a decade, as established by the judgment of the Court of Seville on the ERE case, not only went to workers of companies in crisis that were pre-retired, but also they ended up in the hands of numerous people close to the PSOE and in tax havens.

The First Section of the Hearing has condemned 19 former senior officials of the Junta de Andalucía, including former presidents Manuel Chaves and José Antonio Griñán, and former minister and former counselor Magdalena Álvarez , for implementing an illegal system to dispose and grant at the discretion hundreds of millions of euros skipping all controls in order to silence the labor conflict that at that time, from the year 2000, threatened the hegemony of the PSOE in one of its fiefdoms.

And incidentally, the rain of millions ended up benefiting companies very close to the dome of the Andalusian PSOE. Ángel Rodríguez de la Borbolla , former socialist mayor of the Sevillian municipality of Cazalla de la Sierra and brother of the former president of the Board José Rodríguez de la Borbolla, received irregular aid from the ERE for the amount of 8.4 million euros. The judge has just prosecuted him for embezzlement in one of the more than a hundred pieces torn from the macrocause of corruption that are still under investigation.

He is not the only related businessman who received these grants. In 2004 and 2006, during the Chaves stage as Chairman of the Board, Fundiciones Caetano SA received 3.6 million from the reptile fund for two dismissal processes. It is a society of the family of the entrepreneur that every summer gave his villa to Chaves to spend the holidays in the Huelva beach of La Antilla, called La Tortuga.

Rafael Blasco Caetano, one of the closest friends to former President Chaves, is familiar - first brother by double bond - of Abilio Caetano Blasco, the administrator of Fundiciones Caetano, the company that requested and obtained the two millionaire grants from the ERE that are under judicial investigation. Judge María Núñez Bolaños gave the case a folder on the aid received by Fundiciones Caetano in October 2018, but the Court ordered her to reopen the case last summer.

There are more societies near the PSOE benefited by the ERE. The former Socialist councilors in the Sevillian municipality of El Pedroso, José Enrique Rosendo - now deceased - and José María Sayago , also received 34 million euros from the reptile fund . The investigating judge attributed to both former councilors having constituted a "large group of companies, closely interrelated with each other" and "many of them without activity or workers" whose only "real object" was the perception of official aid.

Tax havens

As for tax havens, as revealed by THE WORLD in February 2013, the plot of the ERE diverted at least 23 million of the Fortia Vida mutual from abroad that came from the reptile fund . The Andalusian Government had contracted with this entity early retirements for a total of 98.5 million, despite the fact that said company was not authorized by the Generalitat to operate outside Catalonia.

An important part of the funds diverted from Fortia Vida from the aid of the Board ended up in a hotel complex in the Dominican Republic , where ERE mediators partnered with the Spanish businessman based in the Dominican Republic Jesús Barderas , friend of former President Felipe González and his host in the Caribbean country.

All of this was corroborated in court on September 26, 2014 by Eduardo Pascual de Arxé , who was called as an investigator - previously charged - in the case because he was the “boss” of one of the two companies that distributed the millionaire business of the intermediation in the early retirement policies that the Board (Vitalia) suffered. Specifically, this company received overcommissions for an amount of at least 36.2 million euros.

In his judicial statement, Pascual de Arxé said that 18 of the 98.5 million that the Andalusian Administration paid in commissions to the Fortia Vida mutual company - linked to the Vitalia holding company - ended up investing “in two hotels in the Dominican Republic” controlled by “linked businessmen with the dome of the national PSOE ».

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  • PSOE
  • Manuel Chaves
  • José Antonio Griñán
  • Corruption
  • ERE case

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