The magistrate of the Court of the square number 6 of the Section of Preliminary Investigation of the Court of First Instance of Seville has decided to move forward with the procedure against four people under investigation, among them the former Director General of Employment and Social Security of the Junta de Andalucía Daniel Alberto Rivera, in a separate piece of the ERE case relating to the allegedly irregular granting and payment of aid of more than 4.2 million euros to SOS Cuétara S.A.
As the Communication Office of the High Court of Justice of Andalucía (TSJA) has reported, in an order dated November 3, the judge adopts this resolution "in case the reported facts could be constitutive" of alleged crimes of administrative prevarication, embezzlement of public funds and falsification of documents.
The investigating judge therefore agrees to transform the preliminary proceedings into an abbreviated procedure against the former senior official of the Junta, two officials of the mediator Vitalia and a 'intruder', the mother-in-law of the former Director General of Employment of the Junta Francisco Javier Guerrero, who is already deceased.
At the same time, he decrees provisional dismissal with respect to two other investigated individuals—a representative of the company and a CCOO union leader—by understanding that "there are no sufficient reasons to attribute to them participation" in the analyzed crimes and that in the case there are no "solid indications that would make it possible to attribute to them participation -relevant criminally- in the facts for which proceedings are being brought".
The judge details that the aid had as its "fundamental purpose" financing "that business restructuring process and increasing the specific economic coverage of the former employees of SOS Cuétara affected" by the ERE through the contracting of a rent insurance policy.
In that policy, the order states, a supposed "worker" would have been included who did not appear among those affected by the ERE and "did not even have an employment relationship with the company at the time of her inclusion as a beneficiary", an incorporation "determined by her kinship relationship" with Francisco Javier Guerrero.
The latter, according to the investigating judge, "taking advantage of the absolute lack of control and oversight of the previous aid, aimed at financing the pre-retirement policies with public money, introduced into the cost of the study of rents of these workers his mother-in-law".
This operation “would have been carried out in collusion with the investigated party herself and those responsible for the consulting firm Vitalia” charged, who “intervened in the processing and management of the income insurance policies, instrumentalized to channel the arbitrary disposal of public funds that are the subject of these proceedings and that would have had as insured parties the former workers of the company affected by the ERE.”
“It was nothing other than the absolute lack of control and oversight that made it possible for two income insurance policies to be subscribed,” for the mother-in-law of the former general director of Labor, “whose premium, in its entirety, would have to be financed by the Regional Government of Andalusia,” the magistrate states.
In this way, and always according to the investigating judge, “the granting” of certain alleged public subsidies “would have been achieved” “in an arbitrary and unjust manner, financed with funds from the Regional Government of Andalusia.”