A serious miscarriage of justice the alleged macro-cause of corruption known as Safeguards II in which former senior socialist officials of the Junta de Andalucía have been under investigation since 2014. The reason is that the time limit provided by law for extending the investigation was not respected, which expired on June 6, 2017. The judge holding Instruction number 6 of Seville, María de los Angeles Núñez Bolañoswho was then dealing with cases of alleged corruption affecting the Andalusian government, opened new investigations too late, when the legal deadline had expired. This was claimed by the defense of five defendants before the First Section of the Provincial Court of Seville, which ruled in favor of their appeals.
In a 21-page order notified to the parties this Wednesday, submitted to ABC, the court composed of five magistrates undertakes to declare that the investigation into the allegedly incriminating facts “was concluded” on June 6, 2017. From then on, any further research would be invalidated, as if it had not existed.
The lawyer who filed the first appeal against this case alleging its expiration, Juan Carlos Alférez, from the Seville law firm Constitución 23provides that all persons instructed will have the file archived after this resolution “since they were all summoned to trial on dates after the expiration date that the Court gives us an estimate of.”
In the Avales II macro-affair, the current investigating judge, José Ignacio Vilaplana, is investigating the “undue granting” to companies of this type of exceptional aid by the Andalusian Agency for Innovation and Development (IDEA), dependent on the Government of Andalusia. The objective is to analyze whether the figure of the guarantees has served as a means of illicit transfer of public funds to certain companies that have also received aid from the ERE fund. Alleged commission of administrative malfeasance and embezzlement crimes under investigationThe summary was divided into 19 pieces, as many as there were companies that irregularly received public money.
A cause born from the trunk of the ERE
The Avales II case, like so many others, appeared as a branch of the trunk of the ERE case. Since its opening on January 28, 2014, this macro-case which affects the management of the IDEA Agency has continued to stumble and accumulate delays.
Specifically, the appeal upheld by the Court of Seville challenges an order by which it agreed on a procedure to investigate the guarantee of 1.5 million euros that IDEA granted to the company. Tartessos Car SL, in which, among others, the former general director of the IDEA agency Jacinto Cañete was investigated; Bienvenido Martínez, who was director of strategic investments at IDEA and brother-in-law of former Civil Guard director María Gámez, and Antonio Diz-Lois Ruiz, former director of finance of the public body. But the effects of this judicial decision go beyond this piece and affect the entire macro cause that incurred the same procedural defect which led to its cancellation.
A procedural defect with “undeniable consequences”
In its decision, the First Section, exercising functions of revision and judicial control, cannot ignore “a procedural defect of such importance that it has incontestable repercussions” for the future of the procedure. He emphasizes that this piece is inseparable from the root cause from which this investigation was born, which dates back to 2014.
“The procedural crisis suffered in the same cases restricts procedural production from 6 June 2017 since the guarantee granted to the company Tartessos Car SL already appeared to be envisaged in the parent investigation since 2013 and had also been agreed statements under investigation and, therefore, we are not in the particular circumstances that arise in this case in the face of a discovery that has taken place or that has no relation to the initial investigation,” warns the order of the Court of Seville.
