The director of the Valencian Antifraud Agency sees a "setback" linking embezzlement to profit

The debate on the legislative changes of the crime of embezzlement have fully burst into the Valencian agenda.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
12 December 2022 Monday 08:31
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The director of the Valencian Antifraud Agency sees a "setback" linking embezzlement to profit

The debate on the legislative changes of the crime of embezzlement have fully burst into the Valencian agenda. In an appearance to present a survey on the perception of corruption, the director of the Valencian Anti-Fraud Agency (AVAF), Joan Llinares, has indicated that the reform of the crime to reduce penalties if there is no profit would mean a "setback" in the fight against corruption. The president of the Generalitat Valenciana, Ximo Puig, for his part, has indicated that the reform "is on the right track".

Llinares has pointed out that establishing a reduced rate if there is a profit motive or not could "facilitate escape routes" for the corrupt. For the director of the AVAF, there is no doubt that the legal right to be protected is the public treasury, so he understands that if there is "mismanagement", it must be considered a crime.

In this line, Llinares has warned of the difficulties that exist to prove, in a guarantee system like the Spanish one, the profit motive. "You enter a dynamic where you can end up in acquittal because it is difficult to demonstrate that profit motive in a loss of public asset management." Llinares has pointed out that many times this personal benefit is not received until a long time later with mechanisms such as "revolving doors".

The person in charge of the Valencian agency created by the Botànic to combat corruption has pointed out that this is an opinion shared by other directors of Anti-Fraud Agencies and that he hopes that the modification will not prosper, because it would be "very negative".

For his part, the professor of Political Science at the University of Murcia who accompanied him in the presentation of the survey, Fernando Jiménez, has refused to give his opinion on this matter, although he has slipped that if he were asked about citizenship, this I would consider embezzlement to be corruption, even if there was no private beneficiary of the person who made the public decision.

The president of the Generalitat, Ximo Puig, has also expressed his opinion, who has assessed that the reform of the crime of embezzlement is "the correct path" because "it seems that it is guaranteed" that "the corrupt cannot be improved by this situation".

Regarding the survey, carried out with more than 1,500 interviews and 400 of them in the Valencian Community, it indicates that Valencians perceive politicians as the most corrupt (58.52%); followed by businessmen (46.4%); officials (37.8%) and citizens (36.6%). Some figures that are not far from the perception of the rest of the Spanish citizens.

Despite considering that politicians are the most corrupt and when asked why corrupt politicians were voted for, most responded “because the candidates are from the party you sympathize with”. The rest of the reasons given in order of relevance are "because they have benefited from the candidate's favors and feel gratitude" and "because they consider that all politicians are corrupt and therefore it doesn't matter who they vote for."

On the other hand, it is also striking that in the last year, at the national level, for 43.34% of the population, corruption neither increased nor decreased. However, the percentage of people who believe that it has increased is 43%, as opposed to 13% who think that corruption has decreased to a greater or lesser extent.

Regarding the protection received by people who report corruption in Spain, the majority think that "protecting people who report corruption is an obligation for the whole of society" followed by "whistleblowers of corruption can be subject to multiple reprisals" and thirdly In place and well below the previous two, it is found that "corruption whistleblowers are already sufficiently protected by the police and judges."