Pedro Sánchez contemplates a reform of the crime of embezzlement in the Criminal Code, in line with the parliamentary processing of the bill registered by the PSOE and United We Can to replace the crime of sedition with that of aggravated public disorder. The red line established by the President of the Government is that a review of embezzlement will in no case mean a setback in the fight or in the current penalties against political corruption.
The head of the Executive himself, in an informal conversation with the press during the reception for Constitution Day in Congress, has in any case called on waiting for the Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC) to register the planned amendment to the bill reform of the Penal Code, whose term expires next Friday. From that moment on, the socialist group will set a position on the matter.
That an eventual reform of the crime of embezzlement does not imply tarnishing the fight against political corruption, which Sánchez wields as a sign of identity of his mandate, is precisely the caution that both the PSOE and Podemos warn, as well as other groups of the majority of the investiture - from the PNV to Más País or Compromís - when it comes to walking on lead feet on this issue.
In the Government, however, they use comparative law, and defend situating the crime of embezzlement in terms similar to those of the legal system in France, Italy or Portugal. On this occasion, Germany, on the other hand, would not be the example to follow, since it was precisely this model that inspired the hardening of embezzlement promoted by the Executive of Mariano Rajoy in 2015. This latest reform, according to socialist sources, would have criminalized this crime in a very generic way. So the claim would now be to define the criminal type in detail. The Minister of Defense, Judge Margarita Robles, has already defended that the current regulation of the crime of embezzlement "is very unequal, because obviously the corrupt person who takes the money to his pocket is not the same as the one who does not take the money to his pocket".
In this same sense, the ERC spokesman in Congress, Gabriel Rufián, defended a "surgical" reform of embezzlement, a crime for which several pro-independence leaders of the process are convicted or prosecuted, precisely to preserve the fight against political corruption.
Executive sources give as an example the case of a mayor who received European funds to invest in digitization projects and who used them to pay the salaries of municipal employees. According to the criteria that is now being considered in the Government, in this case it would not be a crime of political corruption. These sources, in any case, indicate that a reform of the crime of embezzlement in this sense would not affect the specific case of José Antonio Griñán, the former socialist president of the Junta de Andalucía who is pending imprisonment after his conviction for the case of the fraudulent ERE.
