The Supreme Court has confirmed most of the sentences set by the ERE case, including that of former Andalusian presidents Manuel Chaves and José Antonio Griñán, sentenced to nine years of disqualification for prevarication the first and six years in prison for embezzlement of public funds the second.
The judgment of first instance issued in 2019 already established that both were "fully aware" of the illegality that was being committed in the administrative procedures of the Board regarding the Employment Regulation Files (ERE). The Seville Court considered both former presidents and former ministers of socialist governments responsible for the system of illegal public aid that the Andalusian Board established for a decade (2000-2009) to benefit companies in crisis.
In the case of Griñán, the now confirmed ruling pointed out that “the budgeting of fictitious expenses”, in reference to the inclusion in the IFA-IDEA Budget of expenses that were not his but of the Ministry of Employment, “shows that the Ministry of Employment Economy and Treasury knew that the subsidies were not granted by IFA-IDEA, but by the Ministry of Employment, because otherwise, it would not have been necessary to budget the aforementioned fictitious expenses.
In the case of Chaves, the Sevillian Chamber recalled that Chaves presided over the Junta de Andalucía "when the first aid began" to workers affected by ERE "at the end of the 90s and in the year 2000". "The decision to give this aid did not come from the Ministry of Employment, but was a political decision of the Government as a whole," the sentence reasons. "It is logical that any variation in the system for granting these aids, given that it affected more than one ministry, had to go through the final decision of its hierarchical superior, that is, the president of the Board", set the text that three years later has been endorsed.
Specifically, the Chamber has only fully estimated the resources of three defendants, the former Secretary of Labor of the Board Javier Aguado, the former Secretary of Employment and Innovation Juan Francisco Sánchez and the former Andalusian Secretary General of Employment Lourdes Medina, sentenced in the first instance to a crime of prevarication.
The Chamber also partially upholds the appeal of the former General Director of Labor Juan Márquez, whose sentence for embezzlement of public funds is reduced from seven years to three years in prison and the disqualification for the crime of prevarication goes from 18 years to 7 years. The rest of the fifteen convicted remain with the same sentence set by the Provincial Court of Seville.
The Supreme Court ruling is now final, which means that now the Provincial Court of Seville has to agree to its execution in order to serve the sentences. In the case of Griñán, if he files an appeal before the Constitutional Court, he may request the suspension of the sentence while it is resolved.
The only thing that was known this Tuesday is the verdict of the sentence. The full text will not be published until the two magistrates who have announced a dissenting vote, Ana Ferrer and Susana Polo, draft it and incorporate it into the text. Court sources explain that the sentence could take until September because there are only five days left, as August is a non-working day.
Afterwards, in all probability an incident of annulment will be raised before the Chamber itself, to exhaust all avenues before being able to present the following appeal before the Constitutional Court. Once the sentence is notified, it will be when the Provincial Court of Seville initiates the procedures to execute the sentence, which will mean Griñán's entry into prison.
However, the former socialist leader has one last trick to avoid going to jail, which is to request his suspension in the Constitutional Court. There is an unwritten rule that with sentences of no more than five or six years, the court usually agrees to the suspension, to prevent the appeal from ceasing to have effect if the court takes time to resolve it. However, sources from the guarantee body already explain that it is not an absolute rule and depends on several circumstances, including the reasoning of the sentence, the years that have passed since the events and, above all, the existence, as in this case, of votes against the resolution.
At the time that the court takes into account a possible suspension, it will take into account the probability that the appeal filed may prosper, and hence the dissenting votes are essential. In any case, this hypothetical suspension will only be studied if first the body that defends the Magna Carta admits the proposed appeal for processing.
Another variable must be taken into account. The government has already warned the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) that if it does not appoint its two candidates to the TC in September, the Executive will present its own, which will turn the body upside down, which will have a progressive majority.
The court of first instance established that between 2000 and 2009, the then leadership of the Andalusian PSOE hatched a plot that defrauded 680 million public funds. The "absolute lack of control" allowed "totally and absolutely dispense with the administrative procedure in the granting and payment of subsidies", thus favoring a constant diversion of money from the Board in favor of socialist patronage.
The sentence, which will be known in its entirety in the coming days, has a dissenting vote from the magistrates Ana Ferrer and Susana Polo. In said vote, it is considered that the appeals filed by Griñán, in addition to those by former Andalusian officials Miguel Ángel Serrano, Jesús María Rodríguez, Francisco Vallejo and Carmen Martínez, should also have been partially upheld and that, with the lower court ruling annulled, these appellants should having been acquitted of the continuing crime of embezzlement of public funds.
The Court of Seville, now mostly confirmed, also sentenced José Antonio Viera, former Employment Counselor and who in 2000 devised the ERE payment system, and for which he has been sentenced to seven years and a day in jail and 18 years and one day of absolute disqualification for the crimes of embezzlement and prevarication.
In the analyzed sentence were also the former Minister of the Presidency Gaspar Zarrías, sentenced to 10 years of disqualification for prevarication and the former Andalusian Minister of Economy and Finance and former Minister Magdalena Álvarez, sentenced to nine years of disqualification also for prevarication.
