The investigative court number 17 of Madrid investigates a complaint from the Prosecutor’s Office and the Ministry of Labor for an alleged “subsidy fraud” and an alleged “crime of document falsification” by Uatae and Pimec, which includes the respective secretaries of both organizations, María Josefa Landaburu and Josep Ginesta. The judge has accepted the complaint for processing and last week carried out organizational proceedings on the case, legal sources explained.
The judge investigates whether an allegedly false document was used to obtain a public subsidy for self-employed associations higher than what would correspond to the organizations under investigation.
Uatae admitted yesterday to questions from this newspaper that he has already proceeded to return the amount reported by the prosecutor plus a 25% interest surcharge and said that he has filed an appeal with Labor. The association added that the judicial process is initiated at the request of ATA, another self-employed organization. For its part, the Pimec employer association said that it did not request the subsidy nor is it a beneficiary of it. This employer’s association added that since it learned that there was a dispute, it opened an internal file in which – it maintains – they have not found any irregularity.
The origin of the process derives from a letter dated July 28 from the general director of Self-Employment, Maravillas Espín, dependent on the Ministry of Labor directed by Yolanda Díaz. The economic crimes section of the Madrid Prosecutor’s Office, based on that document, presented the corresponding complaint dated November 23, which by distribution fell in the aforementioned court 17 at the beginning of this month.
In the complaint, the Prosecutor’s Office details that “from the account of events and the documentation provided in the document sent to the Prosecutor’s Office, the indicative conclusion is reached that the accused, within the framework of the subsidy granted, carried out, in concert, the performance of different fraudulent acts aimed at improperly obtaining an amount greater than that to which they were legally entitled.”
The subsidies originating from the research are granted by the Ministry of Labor to self-employed associations by virtue of the “staff of workers that made up said associations.” But it is mandatory to qualify for this aid that the organizations are correctly registered as such in each autonomous community. Uatae went to request the aid and added the documentation from the Catalan employers’ association Pimec. Always according to the Prosecutor’s Office, Uatae included a certificate from Pimec “which showed that it was registered in the registry of self-employed associations of Catalonia, when this fact is not true.” Pimec sources maintain that the information and documentation provided by them to Uatae was legal and that it is what they have always used.
Therefore, Uatae applied for the subsidy reporting that the staff was the sum of its own as an association plus that of Pimec. The Prosecutor’s Office adds that the Directorate of Labor Relations of the Generalitat informed the Ministry of Labor that the certificate used to prove that Pimec was in the register of associations “had not been issued” by the Catalan Administration.
The subsidy granted to Uatae and Pimec is for an amount of 266,123.10 euros on December 16, 2021. Although the Prosecutor’s Office maintains – based on different sources – that what would correspond to it if the staff of The Catalan employers’ association is 133,211.84. From this it follows that the amount allegedly collected irregularly rises to more than 132,000, according to estimates from different sources included in the complaint.
The Prosecutor’s Office asks to take statements as investigated from the secretaries of Uatae and Pimec. Subsidies for a global amount of more than half a million euros were distributed between three associations: ATA, UPTA and Uatae.
Sources from the Ministry of Labor indicated that today there is no news about the case and recalled that the case “was brought to the attention” of the Prosecutor’s Office and that they are “collaborating” with it in everything they have claimed.
Uatae defines itself on its website as an organization that is “dedicated to the defense of the labor and social rights of the self-employed as well as the promotion of self-employment and entrepreneurship.”
