New conviction in the macro-cause of corruption of the ERE, the plot hatched by the previous Andalusian governments of the PSOE to divert 679 million euros over a decade. The Court of Seville has condemned the sole administrator of a company in the Huelva town of Nerva that benefited from aid from the ERE illegally in a sentence that puts in the spotlight a former senior official of the Junta de Andalucía who could have lied in this trial.

In the macro-cause of the ERE, almost all the former senior officials of the Junta de Andalucía who were convicted in the first trial, -the one that affects former presidents Manuel Chaves and José Antonio Griñán- have been removed from the following trials that are being held to analyze, separately, each of the aids. The principle of non bis in idem, which prohibits a person from being tried twice for the same acts, has been applied.

This is what happened in the trial of the Nerva company, in which the only person who has sat in the dock of the defendants was the sole administrator of the company that received the aid, while the person in charge of the Junta de Andalucía who granted it attended the oral hearing, but as a witness. However, his statement could lead to criminal consequences.

The Third Section of the Audience of Seville, in a ruling released this Thursday by the press office of the Superior Court of Justice of Andalusia (TSJA), orders to deduct "reliable copy" of the audiovisual record of the trial and the sentence to the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office in case it is appropriate to initiate another judicial case against the witness Juan Márquez, former Director General of Labor of the Board, for an alleged crime of false testimony.

For the magistrates of the Court, there are "signs" that the former director general of Labor "has ostensibly lacked the truth" when he testified in the trial about the aid of the ERE granted to the company of Nerva, despite the fact that he was "warned" of the consequences of a witness lying in a trial. Therefore, there are "sufficient signs to deduce testimony against him," the sentence remarks.

Pastries and bakery

In the same ruling, Carlos Vandellós, sole administrator of the company Nerva Croissant S.L., has been sentenced to two years and nine months in prison for prevarication and embezzlement. This company was engaged in the manufacture and wholesale and retail of bakery, bakery and pastry products. In addition, he must return to the Board the 147,913.92 euros he received from the help of the ERE.

This convict is one of the beneficiaries of the departure of the ERE established by the Junta de Andalucía, also known as reptile fund. It was intended to help workers of companies in crisis, but the mechanism designed to distribute the funds was illegal, as the final judgment of the Supreme Court that has condemned fifteen former senior officials of the Andalusian Government, including Chaves and Griñán, has proven proven.

The new sentence of the ERE on the company of Nerva emphasizes that there has been a "materially unfair" result, derived from the "crude breach and ignorance" of the rules governing aid for companies in crisis, since everything "dragged the stubborn purpose of favoring the defendant and his company, with damage to the budget and public resources and the possibility that such resources had been dedicated to its purpose. own."

The macro cause of the ERE was broken down into more than a hundred pieces, one for each fraudulent aid of the ERE. Now, each of these irregular subsidies must be prosecuted separately from the rest.

Training courses

The new judgment considers proven that the sole administrator of Nerva Croissant "had already received previous public aid and subsidies related to training courses with a commitment to contracting, which he had breached", so that he knew "the lax and alien way to the rules governing subsidies and the administrative procedure" that the Board had been using.

Thus, he contacted the then general director of Labor and Social Security, Juan Márquez, to obtain a subsidy for "his own benefit and under the pretext of the poor performance of his company and the need to maintain jobs." Finally, they agreed to grant an aid of 84,522.13 euros, which was the amount to which the salary debts of the defendant with his workers amounted to the date of request and corresponding to the year 2009, "reason that could justify for the defendant and for the General Directorate itself the release of that sum and the granting of the aid".

The Third Section sees it proven that the General Directorate of Labor and its owner, "once they decided to comply with the request of the accused, despite the fact that he knew, like his superiors, the deputy counselor and the counselor, that the public purpose of the concession was a mere pretext, issued the corresponding resolution and simultaneously or subsequently articulated a feigned procedure that meant completely dispensing with the legal and regulatory established for subsidies and public aid. "

According to the court, there was "not even" a request in the form of the accused; expenditure was not subject to prior auditing; There was no public call or regulatory bases for the subsidy; the exceptionality was not justified by impossibility or difficulty of public convening; no publication of the grant was made as was legally mandatory, and the object of the subsidy was not determined with the required precision, in addition to the fact that this type of subsidy did not fall within the competence of the Directorate-General of Labour.

In addition, the court highlights that the defendant and his company maintained debts with Social Security, the Public Treasury and the Junta de Andalucía itself, which disqualified him from being a beneficiary of subsidies and public aid, a circumstance known to the defendant, who was an experienced professional and was not a "newcomer to subsidies", and by the Directorate-General itself, which had reports and documentation proving such debts, despite which the aid was granted.

  • Case of the ERE
  • Corruption
  • PSOE
  • Manuel Chaves
  • José Antonio Griñán
  • Articles Silvia Moreno

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