The popular group in the Congress of Deputies has registered a non-legislative proposal (PNL) for debate in plenary in which it highlights that the case of fraudulent employment regulation files (ERE) “existed”, and requests a “condemnation” from the Lower House of the “political actions” that “facilitated” it.
This is what can be read in the text of this parliamentary initiative of the PP concerning “the condemnation of the million dollar fraud of public money carried out in the Junta de Andalucía between 2000 and 2009″, recorded after the rulings of the Constitutional Court (TC) which, between June and July, partially accepted the appeals for protection of a dozen former senior officials from the previous stage of the socialist administration of the Council convicted in this case, among whom were former presidents Manuel Chaves and José Antonio Griñán.
Specifically, the PP wants, with this PNL, that the Congress of Deputies condemns and disapproves “the political actions and decisions that have facilitated and favored the fraudulent use of millions of public euros through the deliberate elimination of controls on the management of social funds” -aid to work managed by the entity first called the Andalusian Development Institute (IFA) and later Andalusian Innovation and Development Agency (IDEA) in the decade between 2000 and 2009.
In the explanatory statement justifying this initiative, the PP refers to the decision of the Provincial Court of Seville which, on November 19, 2019, “sentenced various members of the government of the Junta de Andalucía to various sanctions for the so-called ‘ERE case'”, and which was subsequently confirmed -in September 2022- by the Supreme Court (TS) after having been appealed to the Court of Cassation.
“Both sentences presented, following an enormous investigation, a solid set of proven facts that prove the eexistence of a system of payment of social and work aid through the Andalusian Development Institute (IFA) “lacking any type of control,” underlines the PP of the PNL that it submitted to Congress.
From the Popular Group, they point out that “the convictions also prove that the processing of hundreds of millions of public euros through these mechanisms devoid of any administrative procedure allowed the inclusion of beneficiaries who had not belonged to the companies theoretically aided, thus facilitating the continued receipt of these incomes after having ceased to meet the theoretical requirements, or even endorsing the use of these funds for purposes totally unrelated to socio-professional aid.
This “system” – he continues explaining the PP initiative – “was gradually institutionalized to overcome various obstacles that the internal control mechanisms of the autonomous administration warned against”, so that, “to avoid negative reports from these bodies, first, budgetary changes were processed, then a framework agreement never published or reported by the legal services and, finally, a concealment of these aids in a budget item for financing transfers to the IFA which allowed these expenditure files not to be subject to the necessary control.”
Revision of the Constitutional Court
After this story of a system of payment of socio-work aid “devoid of any type of control” which would be at the basis of the ERE case, the PP evokes in its PNL “the exercise of control of ordinary jurisdiction unprecedented to date” that the Constitutional Court made by partially upholding several appeals for protection filed by senior officials found guilty of these events.
“The rulings of the Constitutional Court do not call into question the proven facts or the existence of this system of uncontrolled management of millions of public euros or its use for deceptive purposes,” they emphasize from the PP, from where they add that these rulings “argue that the mechanism used by the accused to allow this system – the creation of a specific item in the regional finance laws – cannot be punished by ordinary justice because it is then subject to the parliamentary approval necessary for its entry into force.”
“That is to say: the events occurred, uncontrolled spending took place, fraudulent uses of public money were consumed and senior officials facilitated this, but they cannot be subject to criminal liability – partly because the sentence recognizes it for the processing of certain budgetary modifications – because the acts with which they enabled this procedure were not administrative but political, framed in the relationship between the government and Parliament”, can be read in the explanatory statement of the PNL of the PP.
The Popular Group then argues that the aforementioned rulings of the TC “do not and cannot establish” an “alternative factual version of what happened in Andalusia in those years”, with “millions of public euros” that “were managed without control” and “used for purposes other than those intended through a mechanism designed and facilitated by the highest government officials of the Council.
“Very serious acts of corruption”
The PP justifies the presentation of this initiative by the postulate that “it is worrying that a false perception is established in public opinion according to which these very serious acts of corruption never took place, or that the accused leaders had no connection with them, while “this is not what can be deduced from convictions that only call into question the possibility of criminally prosecuting facts that are not denied.”
“It would be extremely serious for public discourse and the ethics of politics and administration in our country if an action that is undoubtedly detrimental to public interests were accepted, even for purely discursive and public opinion purposes,” warns the Popular Group, then stressing that “The ERE case existed, the funds were used inappropriately and those responsible for the Andalusian government activated the mechanisms that deliberately facilitated this fraud, regardless of whether the means they used for this were included or not within the scope of criminal prosecution.
“The controversial or non-controversial origin of the criminal reproach in this case must in no case exclude the public, political, moral and ethical reproach necessary for a way of acting that has marked public management in Andalusia for years”, concludes the PP to justify the presentation of this PNL while waiting for the debate in plenary session of the Congress of Deputies.
