“I don’t think there was a big plan, but there was a big fraud,” declared José Antonio Griñán in 2015 outside the Supreme Court. Almost ten years later, the Constitutional Court has ruled in favor of the former president of the Junta de Andalucía with an interpretation of the crimes of prevarication and embezzlement in the case ERE which overturns the central thesis of Judge Mercedes Alaya’s instruction, precisely that of the criminal “grand plan.” According to the magistrate, whose instruction was assumed by the Provincial Court of Seville and the Supreme Court, the ERE scandal was not only a case of corruption, but a gigantic plot led from the top of the Board to keep the PSOE in power with a clientelistic system irrigated with almost 700 million euros for a decade. With the case in the hands of the Constitutional Court, that idea is deflated. And it is not just any idea: it is the one that the PP has used for decades to destroy the Andalusian PSOE.
The case of the ERE is two cases. The first is a fraud in the Employment Department of the Board, where in the first decade of the century cronyism and arbitrariness reigned. It is a case of false early retirees who accessed benefits without right, of businessmen who took advantage of their proximity to power, of lack of control over public funds. An example to illustrate the chaos: Javier Guerrero, general director of Labor from 1999 to 2008, gave aid to his driver, who used it to buy real estate and pay for Guerrero’s own parties. The damage of the case to the image of Andalusia is impossible to measure, since all the most ridiculous clichés about southern robbery were reinforced. The fraud figures are hardly a joke: the Board assures that it claims 135 million in various procedures.
But there is a second case of the ERE, the so-called “political piece”. This is the case that changed the political history of Andalusia. It was raised by Judge Alaya, who always believed that corruption in the Ministry of Employment was only the last link in a chain. That there was a plot, an orchestration, a master plan by dozens of senior officials from different departments in concert to create and maintain, through actions or omissions, a complex system based on prevarication and embezzlement to distribute 680 million euros between 2000 and 2009. All with the aim of buying “social peace”.
This controversial thesis, according to which corruption extended to the budget projects of the Junta Government, was endorsed by the Court of Seville (2019) and the Supreme Court (2022). 16 former senior officials were convicted, including two former presidents, Manuel Chaves (prevarication) and Griñán (prevarication and embezzlement). Since the first of the two sentences, the PSOE has not won a single election in Andalusia. The case has been a mine for the PP, which since it broke out has been responding to each accusation about its own scandals with a “And what about the ERE?”
The entry into play of the Constitutional Court, which will lead to a reduction or annulment of sentences of heavyweights of Andalusian socialism, flatly contradicts Alaya’s theory of a criminal “pyramidal structure.” The line that the court of guarantees has already marked, rejecting the extensive interpretation of prevarication and embezzlement, reduces – it remains to be seen to what extent – the radius of corruption and is incompatible with a conspiracy of the entire Junta up to the top for a decade.
In a ruling that gives partial protection to the former Minister of the Treasury Magdalena Álvarez, convicted of prevarication, the Constitutional Court establishes that the bills, in this case budgets, cannot be considered illegal or criminal. Not only Álvarez, but also others convicted of prevarication, such as Chaves and Griñán, may benefit. Regarding embezzlement, the draft sentence on former Treasury Counselor Carmen Martínez Aguayo gives her protection for similar reasons and refutes her conviction for acts committed by third parties. As EL PAÍS has published, there are arguments used in the review of the Aguayo case that will serve Griñán. The presentations on two other former councilors convicted of embezzlement – Antonio Fernández, from Employment; and Francisco Vallejo, from Innovation, also foresee sentence reductions.
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The Andalusian PSOE, in low times, is already entertaining the idea of using the change of script on the case and the possible compensation of key names from its recent history to clean up its image and recover its old pride. It will not be easy. “The PP has successfully used this case to destroy the hegemony of the Andalusian PSOE by presenting it as a corrupt and banana party. Whatever the Constitutional Court says, the idea of the great corrupt plot is installed in society and it will be difficult to remove it,” explains political scientist Oriol Bartomeus, an expert in electoral behavior. “Prestige is lost very quickly, but it takes a long time to recover,” he adds.
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