Two businessmen sentenced to a year and a half in prison in the fourth trial for aid from the ERE

Facade of the Court of Seville.Efe

The convictions for the separate pieces of the macro-cause

they are happening.

The fourth case, which prosecuted aid worth 420,708 euros to the company Novomag Manufacturas Metálicas de La Línea de la Concepción (Cádiz) has resulted in a sentence of one and a half years in prison for two of the five defendants.

The First Section of the Provincial Court of Seville has only judged the responsibility of the beneficiaries and not that of those who granted it, in this case the former director of Labor and Social Security of the Board, Javier Guerrero, now deceased, on the understanding that he had already been tried in the so-called "specific procedure" or political piece of the ERE, whose sentence was ratified in July by the Supreme Court.

The court considers the two convicted collaborators necessary for a crime of prevarication in medial competition with another of embezzlement of public funds.

The other three defendants have been declared acquitted because, in the opinion of the magistrates, there were "reasonable doubts" that they knew that the allocation of funds was unfair.

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What political impact did the fraud have?

The magistrates consider that for the granting of the aid of 420,708 euros "the most essential formalities of the legally established procedure were dispensed with" and that said provision "suffers from a reasoned resolution of granting".

"There is no doubt in our minds that the agreement is completely inadmissible," they state in the sentence.

The ruling concludes that not only was there no formal request for the aid granted, but that it was granted without any prior economic analysis to back it up.

The facts that are judged date back to 2003, when the five defendants formed Novomag in order to receive public funds from the Board and use them to pay the debts of another company, Idisur, founded previously and that had ceased its activity a year earlier. .

According to the ruling, the two convicted held a meeting with Guerrero to "obtain financing", but at no time "was Novomag presented a formal request for help, nor is there evidence that documentation had been attached on which to carry out the corresponding economic analysis” to determine that they fit the criteria determined for their concession.

In 2003, the General Directorate of Labor of the Board signed a collaboration agreement through the former Andalusian Development Institute so that Novomag could make investments for the purchase of new machinery and equipment, for which the entity was entrusted to pay 420,708 .47 euros to the Cadiz company.

Those convicted, however, “decided to allocate public funds to pay fees to an entity for the services provided to Idisur and to settle the debts that this company had with Social Security.

The Court has appreciated the mitigation of undue delays "given the time elapsed and the complex nature of the proceedings", as it did with the former mayor of Cazalla de la Sierra, Ángel Rodríguez de la Borbolla —brother of the former president of the Board,

Controversial exclusion of the high officials convicted in the political piece

As was the case with the case that judged aid to some cork companies in the Sierra Norte de Sevilla, in this procedure those responsible for granting those funds have not been prosecuted, a circumstance to which the court itself refers in its ruling when refers to the criminal conduct included in the criminal type of prevarication: "Regardless of the person or persons who from the Administration have intervened in the delivery of the questioned aid and whose conduct has not been possible to prosecute in these actions."

That “person or persons” refers to Guerrero, who, with a prison sentence of almost eight years, was the main convict in the political piece of the ERE, which also found guilty two former presidents of the Board, four former councilors and four others. former senior administration officials.

The Seventh Section of the Seville Court decided to exclude from the pieces

that it has assigned to the former leaders of the Board in the specific procedure, considering that a person cannot be tried twice for the same facts.

This interpretation of the principle of

has been applied in this piece and also in the one that judged aid to cork companies in the Sierra Norte de Sevilla.