The Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office has supported the immediate imprisonment of the former Andalusian president José Antonio Griñán to serve his six years in prison for embezzlement of public funds for the ERE case after the Supreme Court confirmed the sentence imposed at the time by the Provincial Court of Sevilla.
According to tax sources, the representatives of the public ministry have opposed the request of the former socialist leader to suspend the sentence while the Government resolves his request for pardon. He also has yet to present an appeal before the Constitutional Court, where he will also request the suspension while it is studied whether his rights have been violated.
Anticorruption considers that imprisonment is the necessary consequence after the sentence of the Supreme Court. Now the Court has to resolve whether Griñán should finally enter a prison, in a decision that has no deadline.
In addition to Griñan, eight other former officials of the Junta de Andalucía were also sentenced to prison terms, and all of them are pending a measure of grace. Other former members of the Andalusian Government were sentenced but in their case only to disqualification, such as former president Manuel Chaves and former councilors Gaspar Zarrías and Magdalena Álvarez.
It was on September 1 when the family of José Antonio Griñán registered with the Ministry of Justice the request for a partial pardon for the former Andalusian president, sentenced to six years in prison for the crimes of prevarication and embezzlement, which is what implies the imprisonment.
The request for pardon, something that the rest of the convicts have also requested, is one more piece of the procedural strategy of Griñán, 76, like that of the Constitutional Court arguing the violation of some fundamental right in order to request the total suspension or partial execution of the sentence.
The sentence was ratified this summer by the Supreme Court, in a sentence that had two dissenting votes against the conviction for embezzlement. The Supreme considered it proven that the nine former executive positions were aware of the irregular framework for the concession of social and labor aid for a decade (2000-2009) and that it produced a hole in the public coffers of more than 680 million, who acted knowingly of the "lack of control" and the "very serious illegalities" that were being committed, despite which they did nothing to prevent it.
