The Constitutional Court has decided to partially uphold the appeal of the former president of the Andalusian Regional Government, Manuel Chaves, and return his case to the Seville Court for it to reconsider and reduce his sentence of nine years of disqualification in the ERE case. The progressive majority of the plenary, as happened with the former minister Magdalena Álvarez, believes that the courts went too far in considering that political acts such as approving draft budgets could constitute a crime of prevarication and orders the issuance of a new sentence that excludes a good part of the accusations from the criminal narrative.
The court, according to a statement, considers that its right to criminal law has been violated and returns the case to the Seville Court. It is expected that in the next few hours it will also analyze and uphold José Antonio Griñán’s appeal against his sentence of six years and six months in prison for prevarication and embezzlement.
The court of guarantees has been studying for weeks the appeals of the former senior officials of the Andalusian Government in the case of the ERE: the multimillion-dollar system of public aid to companies and workers that, according to the Supreme Court, was based on a lack of control established and maintained by the governments of the socialists Manuel Chaves and José Antonio Griñán. The first was sentenced to nine years of disqualification for prevarication and the second to six and a half years in prison, with the judges adding the charge of misappropriation of public funds.
The various sentences have fully or partially upheld the appeals of almost all of the convicted. In some cases, such as that of Carmen Martínez Aguayo, the sentences have been completely annulled. In others, such as that of Magdalena Álvarez, the Seville Court has been ordered to repeat its sentence but, in practice, reduce its sentence by excluding a large part of the acts that had been considered criminal.
The plenary, with the votes against of the four conservative judges, understands that many acts condemned as prevarication or embezzlement, such as the approval of draft and budget projects, cannot be criminalized, and that having done so has meant an unforeseeable sentence for the senior officials of the Junta. In other cases, the plenary has also understood that acts such as the specific payment of aid to irregular destinations can be a crime but sentences have been handed down without sufficient arguments.
Shortly before the deliberations began, the Constitutional Court rejected the recusal that the PP had presented in recent days against two judges from the progressive sector: María Luisa Balaguer and Inmaculada Montalbán. The plenary, by unanimous vote of conservatives and progressives, decided to reject them because they had been raised out of time.
Source: www.eldiario.es
