During the trial held by the Third Chamber of the Court of Seville against the former general director of the Andalusian Foundation Training and Employment Fund (Faffe) Fernando Villén and the former mayor of Lebrija Antonio Torres Garcia (PSOE)for alleged prevarication and embezzlement in the context of the “arbitrary” hiring of the aforementioned former first mayor; A former head of said entity investigated in the parent case said he did not “physically” see Torres at the entity’s headquarters.
Concretely, this Tuesday Juan Carlos Díaz Matías, who was director of Permanent Structures of Faffe, investigated the essence of this macro-case, an aspect of which the court was unaware until it was highlighted at the beginning of the act by the anti-corruption prosecutor Fernando Soto.
This witness recounted that during his several years with Faffe, he He did not “physically” see Antonio Torres García in the facilities of the entity of the Junta de Andalucía. Furthermore, and despite the fact that according to the investigation, Villén would have created the External Relations Department within Faffe to entrust these allegedly fictitious area to the former socialist mayor of Lebrijathis witness declared that he does not remember that he attended the management committees of the entity, which were held every Monday after having convened each of the department directors, among whom he included himself.
However, he emphasized that He dealt with the former mayor “twice” for reasons linked to his role within the Faffe, describing that in the first case he had a “face to face” contact of approximately “15 or 20 minutes” with Torres García, because he was promoting an action linked to academia with implications for raise European funds for the projecteven if the idea ultimately didn’t have “many trips”.
On the second occasion, as he detailed, his organizational head, Joaquín Alberto Morales, told him thatThe Spanish Foreign Cooperation Agency was looking for profiles for Spanish participation in a forum celebrate in Peru in relation to local entities and associations, asking his superior to contact Torres García given his “municipal experience” and that his career “coincided” with the “profile” this was researched.
I traveled as a guest
He, as he said, would have limited himself to “bouncing” said email to Torres Garcíaconfirming that his “profile coincided” with that requested by the Spanish Foreign Cooperation Agency and that Torres García had therefore traveled to Peru as a “guest”, charged to state funds, to participate in said forum with a “conference”.
This witness stated at all times that He “took for granted” that Torres García had a “relationship” with Faffealthough he assured that at that time he was unaware of the specific “format” of the link between the former mayor of Lebrija and the entity, recalling that it had a workforce of around “1,800 people”. Thus, he said he had the “impression” that between the former mayor and Faffe there was “a sort of collaboration agreement”.
During the session, in addition, The court determined that it will be October 10 when the two accused will appearwho had asked to testify at the end of the trial and not at the beginning.
According to the order transforming the procedure into an abbreviated procedure in this case, after Antonio Torres lost the mayoralty of Lebrija in the 2003 municipal elections after 24 years in power, would have requested the technical general director of the Andalusian Foundation for Training and Employment at the time for his “placement at Faffe, to which Villén agreed, promoting in his favor a new management position, which in reality did not exist, which would satisfy the conditions of permanent contract and salary requested” by the already former socialist mayor of Lebrija .
All this, despite the fact that Torres García “lacked training and skills to take on roles corresponding to said professional “manager” level.
Thus, and according to the investigating judge, the former mayor of Lebrija “He was hired on July 1, 2003 with a temporary contractextended and permanent from December 1, 2004, as an administrator, with a total remuneration of 46,750 euros per year, being registered as an employee with Faffe until his termination of employment and his integration in May 2011 into the Service Andalusian Employment (SAE).
Unfair hiring
The hiring, according to the investigating judge, took place “without any process of evaluation or contrast of the aptitude or aptitude of the person to be hired”, that is to say “of unfair and arbitrary manner, in disregard of the hiring procedures to which the Faffe had to be adjusted, without any agreement from other possible candidates for the position, and in a manner contrary to the general principles of publicity, objectivity, impartiality, equal opportunitiesthe merit and capacity that would govern the said selection and hiring process, in accordance with the regulations themselves.
“There is no documentation revealing minimal compliance with requirements and the budgets which govern the selection and hiring of staff, whether technical or managerial, by a public foundation like Faffe”, determines the investigating judge.
To this is added, as the judge specifies in the order, that the administrative organization chart of the Faffe “did not envisage any management position that he could access“The former mayor investigated, so the other defendant “came to create an ‘ad hoc’ department which he called the Directorate of External Relations”, a department which “was in reality non-existent, so that it was missing effective structure, functions and content; without physical headquarters, no offices, no desks, no assigned staff. »
He didn’t even go to the foundation’s headquarters
Indeed, the judge warns that the former mayor “did not even go to the foundation’s headquarters, nor did he carry out any work (he was unknown to the other workers and managers), although business or presentation cards have been obtained“, so that “the limited activity carried out, limited to specific contacts with a politician or an authority”, was carried out “always” from his home” and with his own means, computer and generic and free email account “.
Therefore, “The respondent Antonio Torres would have held a higher level position, non-existent in the organization of the Faffe, without a specific mission and, ultimately, without carrying out real work, with the acceptance and approval of Fernando Villén, which would have allowed Torres García to receive 491,203.03 euros until 2020“without it being recorded that he actually worked, also benefiting from the advantages of a fictitious registration for social security, and finally being integrated into the Andalusian Employment Service after the extinction of the Faffe, without more deserves only his affinity and his personal and political links with Villén Rueda”, summarizes the judge, who thus orders the continuation of the procedure according to the abbreviated procedure.
Thanks to such alleged facts, The prosecution requests four years in prison against Fernando Villén for an alleged offense of embezzlement and ten years of special ban for a possible offense of prevarication; while for the former mayor of Lebrija, he demands two and a half years in prison for embezzlement and four years of disqualification for alleged prevarication.
About Villén, let us remember, There is already a first sentence of six years in prison for a continuing offense of embezzlement in competition with a continuous crime of falsification of an official document as an instigator, for payments in hostess clubs with bank cards of the aforementioned public entity, belonging to the Junta de Andalucía.
