It will be a matter of days when the Provincial Court of Seville decides whether or not to order the imprisonment of José Antonio Griñán, former president of the Andalusian Government, as well as the other eight sentenced to prison terms for the ERE case, the fraudulent framework created under a socialist government with which uncontrolled aid was granted to companies and employees during the years of the economic crisis.
And it is that Anticorruption has returned to pronounce itself in the same sense as last week, when the Justice of Seville asked for an opinion on how to proceed, taking into account the appeals filed by those sentenced and that have not yet been resolved: the convictions are for comply with them, he has argued, an extreme that also supported the private accusation in this political piece exercised by the PP.
Let us remember that it was in the month of September when the Supreme Court ruled on this case, ratifying the former president's conviction for embezzlement as well as the 6-year prison sentence for committing this crime.
The Provincial Court had given the Prosecutor's Office a period of three days to study the allegations of the defenses and rule again on this issue. Each and every one of the convicts requested a postponement until both the incidents of annulment filed in the Supreme Court were resolved, as well as the appeals for amparo before the Constitutional Court and the requests for pardon to the Government.
Given these allegations, the Delegate Prosecutors in Seville for Anticorruption Juan Enrique Egocheaga Cabello and Manuel Fernández Guerra point out in this new letter that the Prosecutor's Office "already took into account to assess the origin of the suspension of the custodial sentence" the presentation of incidents of annulment, "as announced by their procedural representations in their respective writings" requesting the suspension of the sentence.
However, the response from the Prosecutor's Office has been clear: these arguments were assessed "in all their extremes" in the report issued on November 2. Therefore, there is no change of heart on your part.
The Prosecutor's Office insists that since the sentence is final, for which Griñán was sentenced to six years in prison for embezzlement and fifteen more years of disqualification for prevarication, it must be fulfilled. Thus, as he defends, the entry into prison of the former Minister of the Treasury Carmen Martínez Aguayo, the former Minister of Innovation Francisco Vallejo, the former Minister of Employment and Technological Development José Antonio Viera, the also former Minister of Employment Antonio Fernández, the former director of the IDEA agency Miguel Ángel Serrano, the former general director of Labor Juan Márquez, the former deputy minister of Innovation Jesús María Rodríguez Román and the former general director of Budgets of the Board Vicente Lozano.
Few resources are left for the defense to stop the entry into prison of their clients. Each and every one of the convicts has followed the same steps after the Supreme Court's final ruling on this matter was made known: they filed motions for annulment and amparo appeals, in addition to requesting a pardon and registering it with the Ministry of Justice.
In the case of Griñán, it was his wife and children who carried out this last procedure, and request the granting of this measure of grace, citing "humanitarian causes".
It was José María Calero, defense attorney for the former president, who sent a letter to the Seville Court requesting the suspension of his client's sentence once the Prosecutor's Office advised the immediate execution of his sentence.
Calero explained that there are "exceptional assumptions" in his case to stop his entry into prison, including Griñán's age (76), that between thirteen and twenty-two years have passed since the ERE system was in operation, in addition to underlining that it is "the only conviction in his entire life". In addition, he referred to the support that more than 4,000 personalities from different fields had given to the request for a partial pardon of the former president.
Burned all the cartridges, it only remains to wait for the final decision of the Court.
