The civil and criminal section of the Superior Court of Justice of the Principality of Asturias (TSJA) has ratified a ruling from the third section of the Asturian Provincial Court that determines that a family from Avilés collected for 31 years the pension of the grandmother who died in 1988. However, said sentence does not consider it a crime.
According to La Nueva España, both courts affirm that “there is a lack of sufficient deception”, which is why the granddaughter of the deceased – the only one prosecuted – is not sentenced since her mother, the daughter of the pension holder, died 10 years ago. years.
According to said media, the grandmother, who died in 1988, had an account opened in a branch in Avilés into which her pension was deposited every month. When she died, her daughter did not notify the authorities – the National Social Security Institute (INSS) and the bank – of her death, and she continued managing the account, since she was also the owner, and collecting the pension until her death 10 years ago. Likewise, her granddaughter was a co-owner of the same account, so she collected the pension for six more years, until 2019, when the authorities detected what was happening and reported it.
Regarding the fact of taking legal action, they could not do so against the pensioner’s daughter, since she had died in 2013, but they could against the granddaughter, who between 2013 and 2019 earned almost 62,000 euros. For its part, the bank paid the General Treasury of Social Security the amount of 39,176.22 euros, according to La Nueva España.
At first, the Provincial Court acquitted the granddaughter of social security fraud and usurpation of civil status, considering that neither Social Security nor the banking entity adequately controlled the matter, taking into account that since 1996 it has been mandatory that the bank annually verifies the survival of the pension holders.
As could be expected, both the INSS and the banking entity filed an appeal with the TSJA, since they considered that a crime had occurred against Social Security and the Public Administration was intentionally harmed. However, the court does not see a crime either and indicates that “what cannot be sustained is that the sentence lacks motivation or that it is irrational, arbitrary or lacking any logic as would be necessary to estimate the reason for the appeals.”
