THE First section of the Seville court The start of the trial against the former Director General of Labor and Social Security of the Commission has been set for this Thursday. Daniel Alberto Rivera and a former member of the CCOO union, for alleged crimes of prevarication and embezzlement in the more than 9.76 million euros granted by the Andalusian government outside the “legal procedure”, for the income insurance policies of the company’s workers Fertiberia appearing in the labor regulation files (ERE) undertaken by the said entity.
In its indictment, the prosecution details the ERE promoted in 2003 by Fertiberia to eliminate 166 jobsspecifying that even if the company “did not request any type of direct or socio-professional help, the General Directorate of Labor and Social Security» of the Management and the current Innovation and Development Agency of Andalusia (IDEA), granted socio-professional aid of more than 2.26 million euros to 14 former workers who took early retirement “due to the breakdown of their employment relationship”.
In this context, the Prosecutor’s Office highlights in particular the case of 12 Fertiberia workers who, thanks to the terms of the ERE negotiation, accepted their transfer to other workplaces and, “a few days later, on the advice of their union representatives, They asked for motivation leave thus ending his employment relationship with the company between March and May 2004, benefiting from a transfer incentive and then an additional one for incentive leave.
These 12 workers, according to the prosecution, “sent a letter collectively and individually” to the Director General of Labor and Social Security at the time, Francisco Javier Guerrerodied in October 2020 and found guilty of prevarication and embezzlement as part of the sentence for the “specific procedure” of financing the ERE instigated by regional funds and arbitrary and unprecedented aid to businesses; as well as the former provincial delegate of the Employment Department of Seville, Antonio Rivas.
In their letter, according to the Public Prosecutor’s Office, they requested “collaboration in the face of the particular circumstances” which they faced “in order to obtain social assistance and undertake to return the check received corresponding to the severance pay “, which, according to the opinion of the Prosecutor’s Office, “an illicit mechanism was articulated to request the transfer of the workplace to, shortly after, obtain incentive leave and the inclusion of these workers as beneficiaries of the policies pension insurance, through which instrumentalized the illicit payment of aid.
The role of the trade unionist
The prosecution highlights the role in the events of the accused JAFG while he Secretary of Organization, Finance and Communication of the Federation of Textile, Chemical and Allied Industries of CCOO, “aware of the illegality of the subsidies and the incorrect actions of the administration which grants them”.
According to the indictment, the aforementioned workers and JAFG “carried out the procedure described to obtain the pre-retirement conditions to which these people were not entitled, ‘escaping any form of administrative discipline’, the aforementioned trade unionist having accepted” the inclusion of these workers” as beneficiaries of Fertiberia’s retirement insurance policies, “with the participation of the mediator Vitalia Vida» through the also accused and former director of said entity Antonio Albarracin.
Thus, in October 2004, the then general director of Labor and Social Security of the Authority, Francisco Javier Guerrero, formalized a document intended to “pay” 812,049 euros to pay for the policy of these 12 former Fertiberia workers; after which the director of Vitalia accused in the case “intervened in the formalization of the corresponding insurance policies (…) knowing the illegality of the system of granting and financing aid, taking advantage of his relations with those responsible of the General Directorate of Labor.
The “12 political complements”
That same month, the Fertiberia ERE 2003 income insurance policies were signed with a total amount of 2.1 million euroswith more than 540,000 euros to be paid by workers coinciding “with the amount of their remuneration” and the rest by the Council, including “12 policy supplements which would bring the debt” of the Council to 1,947 million euros; although in 2008 two other policies were taken out for two other employees affected by the 2003 ERE, for a final amount of 317,735 euros.
Already in 2009, according to the prosecution, Fertiberia had promoted another ERE for the elimination of 223 jobs, emphasizing that “The expected cost of layoffs amounts to 16 million euros, the Régie having to assume 50 percent of this amount and Fertiberia the rest.
Thus, the Prosecutor’s Office specifies that in total, the Authority granted Fertiberia aid worth more than 9.76 million euros, including 1.947 million in the case of the 12 aforementioned workers from the 2003 ERE, plus an additional 317,735 euros for the bonuses of the other two. workers from the collective dismissal of 2003 and 7.5 million euros for the income insurance policy of 159 ERE workers in 2009, “of which no payment is recorded”; by weighing in this the different payment orders of Daniel Alberto as Director General of Labor since April 2010, at the IDEA agency, in relation to this aid granted.
Without “judicial procedure”
“These subsidies were intended to finance the cost of collective redundancy compensation agreed between the company and the workers” and, according to the prosecution, they constituted “real aid to the company, not record any economic analysis carried out by the Council“on its origin and that during its processing “we have totally and absolutely renounced the legal procedure”, which “would result in a total nullity”, despite the fact that there is neither “control” nor control of the money granted.
Thus, the prosecution qualifies the facts as an alleged continuous offense of prevarication in competition with a continuous offense of embezzlement against the accused, a former trade unionist of the CCOOO and the former director of Vitalia and of the same nature but without continuous character with regard to the former Director General of Labor Daniel Alberto Rivera, demanding for the first two seven years of prison, the same period of special ban and 17 years of absolute ban; and for Rivera five years in prison, the same period of special prohibition and 12 years of absolute prohibition.
Some time ago, let us recall, Rivera’s lawyer regretted, during the trial of another separate piece of the ERE, that after his exclusion from the main piece of the “specific procedure”, Daniel Alberto Rivera was indicted in around fifty separate documents corresponding to the aid in question financed by said financing mechanism, with requests for sentences of an average of six years in prison, which is added to requests for sentences which reach around 300 years in prison.
