Courts Sentence of the ERE: six years in prison for José Antonio Griñán and nine years of disqualification for Chaves
ERE case: This is how EL MUNDO uncovered the ERE case, the largest corruption scandal of democracy in Spain
The Prosecutor's Office has described as
"irrational" and "contrary to logic"
the exculpatory version that the former presidents of the Junta de Andalucía, Manuel Chaves and José Antonio Griñán, and 17 other former Andalusian officials have expressed in their appeals before the Court Supreme Court against the sentence of the Seville Court that condemned all of them in November 2019 for the ERE, the largest corruption case in the country due to the volume of fraud, which amounts to
679 million euros
.
In a letter of 789 pages, advanced by Abc and in the hands of EL MUNDO, the Prosecutor's Office requests that the sentences imposed by the Seville Court for prevarication and embezzlement and censorship the
"patent illegality"
of the ERE system be maintained.
This model was implemented by the Andalusian socialist governments to dispose and grant at their discretion hundreds of millions of euros -679 for a decade-, bypassing all controls, in order to appease the social conflict that, from the year 2000, threatened the hegemony of the PSOE in one of its fiefdoms.
Despite the fact that Chaves, Griñán and the former senior officials of higher rank tried to discharge their responsibility in lower echelons of the Administration, the Prosecutor's Office remarks that the ERE aid was granted "without being subject to any procedure and without the necessary inspection." , not by "a unilateral decision by those responsible for the Employment Department or by directives issued by the Treasury Department", but rather it was "a
collegiate
(shared)
decision
of the Governing Council as a means of avoiding the objections in the control of the files of socio-labor aid and companies in crisis by the Intervention of the Board ".
The Prosecutor's Office does not believe the exculpatory version of any of the accused and especially Chaves.
"As has been stated in relation to other appellants, what is completely
irrational and illogical
is to pretend that it is accepted as a premise that a position of such high substance and responsibility as that of Chairman of the Board, held for almost 20 years -since the year 1990 until the 7-4-2009 [by Chaves] -, it is exercised in a kind of
autistic limbo
in which nothing is known about what, precisely, the functions that correspond to it, require, impose and carry out, at least , regarding the agreements of the Governing Council that he presided, "says the Prosecutor's Office.
The alleged ignorance that Chaves wielded about the ERE is especially suspicious, when social and labor aid "was the axis of the Board's social policy, as stated in their statements by those who were president and counselor of the Presidency",
Gaspar Zarrías
, recall in his brief the prosecutors
Fernando Prieto Rivera and Rafael Escobar Jiménez
.
The sophism of ignorance
For the Prosecutor's Office, "although in the argumentation" wielded by the former high-ranking convicted officials "beats the sophistry of ignorance" of what was happening with the ERE, in the case of Chaves, "the position he held and his consequent functions as president of the Governing Council of the Board, which determined the lines of political action, as well as
appointed and dismissed the directors
, prevents accepting their absolute lack of knowledge of the system "that protected the also known as the 'reptile fund'.
For this reason, the Seville Court did not commit "any arbitrariness" when it rejected "outright a complete ignorance of the granting of exceptional subsidies by the Junta de Andalucía for almost
a decade,
" the Prosecutor's Office adds.
He reminds Chaves that there are
five "documents
and meetings that show" that he was aware of the business crisis situation and the granting of ERE aid.
Among them, he cites the letter delivered to him by the workers of the Bilore company, who told in the trial that they met with the president of the Board and the employment counselor in Lucena.
Griñán's excuses
Griñán, who was Minister of Economy and Finance between April 24, 2004 and April 23, 2009, and Chairman of the Board between April 23, 2009 and September 7, 2013, tried to discharge his responsibility in the
comptroller general
, who was acquitted in the ERE trial.
"The attempt to exempt the accused from responsibility, unloading the blame in the intervention of the Intervention,
is not acceptable
, because the Intervention is not the guarantor of compliance by the counselor with its own competences," warns the Prosecutor's Office.
The question does not lie in "what other actions, in the hypothetical field, could have carried out the general controller", since "the
seriousness
of the non-compliances that are included in the financial control reports suppose a more than enough account. so that
the necessary measures had been adopted
to correct the illegalities denounced in the aforementioned reports, "adds the Prosecutor's Office.
Griñán, as Minister of Finance, could have
ordered "the suspension of payments
or of the payment schedules of financing transfers" and, being responsible for preparing the budgets, "it was in his hands to stop using the budgetary instrument "that covered the irregular payments of the ERE.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
Know more
PSOE
THE WORLD
Supreme court
Jose Antonio Griñán
Manuel Chaves placeholder image
ERE case
Andalusia
Corruption
AndalusiaThe Prosecutor's Office asks the Supreme Court to confirm all the ERE convictions, including the embezzlement of José Antonio Griñán
Faffe case The Faffe parliamentary commission will call Susana Díaz again a year and a half after her establishment
CorruptionThe judge promotes the investigation into the 'plugged in' at Faffe and the "opaque" contracts of 9 million
See links of interest
Holidays 2021
Holidays Andalucia