They ask that the trial be annulled against the former UGT leader and a dozen union suppliers accused of fraudulently diverting up to 40.7 million euros of training aid and which were, allegedly, destined to maintain the union structure itself. This has been requested by the defenses, who point out that the case is based on documentation stolen “illicitly” and an “inquisitorial” instruction by Judge Ayala, the judge also in charge of the ERE macro-cause.
It was this morning when, after two postponements, 15 people involved in this fraudulent scheme sat on the bench in the Third Section of the Seville Court in a process that is expected to last until the month of June. Among them, the former Secretary General Francisco Fernández Sevilla stands out; the former Secretary General of Administration of UGT-A, Federico Fresneda; the former Secretary of Economic Management, María Charpín; the former head of the Purchasing department; the CEO of the entity Soralpe I Mas P Asociados, Enrique Goicoechea; as well as ten people who acted as union suppliers.
Manuel Pastrana, leader of UGT, was left out of the trial given his “situation of sudden incapacity”, as ordered by the investigating judge Juan José Vélez, who decreed the dismissal of the proceedings regarding him.
For fraud and forgery in a commercial document, Anti-Corruption requests up to 7 years in prison for the three leaders of the union, Sevilla, Fresneda and Goicoechea, as well as the payment of a fine of 50 million euros. Specifically, the Prosecutor’s Office reports that the union leadership, necessarily helped by some employers, obtained up to 40.7 million euros corresponding to 14 aid files granted by the General Directorate of Training of the Ministry of Employment between 2009 and 2011 for the carrying out more than 2,000 courses or training activities for the unemployed and used them for another purpose.
In addition, it also demands that they jointly compensate the Board with the 40,750,047 euros allegedly defrauded, an amount that is reflected in the order, and includes UGT-A as subsidiary civil liable for this amount and jointly liable for the fines.
The Prosecutor’s Office also requests 5 years in prison for the person responsible for the central accounts, as well as 3 years in prison for the companies that collaborated with this fraud, suppliers to the union, considering them necessary collaborators of UGT-A for the commission of the crimes.
The instructor indicated that there is evidence that between 2009 and 2013 there were “concerted procedures between those responsible for UGT-A and certain suppliers” to provide the union with “a means of financing to carry out its own actions.”
The operation, according to the magistrate, involved allocating the funds received through public subsidies “for purposes other than those they should have had, which were “the practice of training actions, for employed and unemployed personnel, in accordance with the records of public subsidies that were granted by the General Directorate of Training”.
In achieving those fraudulent financing purposes, the judge asserted, “it was necessary to involve companies that, as suppliers, provided the documentary and accounting infrastructure that would allow obtaining funds intended for training, in order to divert them, in order to sustain the current expenses of the union”.
However, the defenses want to deactivate this case, and have requested it on this first day, when the hearing with the previous issues took place. It was at this moment that the defense lawyer Luis López de Castro, on behalf of Federico Fresneda, has indicated that this case against the members of the UT arises from “stolen documentation” and “illicitly obtained” by the former UGT worker. -To Roberto Alejandro Macías Chaves, (convicted of a crime of discovery and disclosure of secrets for leaking to the media “reserved and sensitive information” of the union about these events but not to the police and judicial authorities), this results in “the nullity” of all the actions of this judicial process.
Thus, the lawyer has insisted that these leaks took place “in connivance with the Manos Médicas union, which have turned out to be not so clean, and with the media” and, in addition, has used jurisprudence according to which “the evidence of illicit origin must be ruled out”, which in this case, due to a “domino” effect, results in the complete “nullity” of what was done.
Roberto Alejandro Macías Chaves, as the lawyer has highlighted, “illicitly” obtained UGT-A documentation and transferred it to the media, “not to the Prosecutor’s Office or the court”, “in bad faith, with the utmost intention of revenge and hatred.”
On the other hand, Fresneda’s lawyer has stressed the “disproportionate” role of Judge Mercedes Ayala, the person in charge of carrying out the investigation of this case and the initial instructor of the macro-cause of the fraudulent employment regulation files (ERE). financed from regional funds and arbitrary aid to companies.
Thus, she said, the investigation carried out by her was “inquisitorial, disproportionate, exaggerated, flawed and under unjustified summary secrecy”; at the same time that a “parallel trial” continued in the media, leaving the accused in a situation of complete “defenselessness.”
It was, according to this lawyer, a general and “practically unlimited” investigation into the union, with a summary secret in force “for too long, exceeding all limits.”
In this framework, he has assured that the home searches authorized first by Alaya and then by the investigating judge number nine at the UGT-A headquarters, the homes of the accused and the facilities of the supplier companies lacked “sufficient justification” and of the necessary hearing to the Public Prosecutor’s Office. It was, in his opinion, a measure “without proportionality”, as well as the tapping of mobile phones and the arrest of the accused, as it lacked “real motivation”.
He has also regretted that the Central Operational Unit (UCO) of the Civil Guard used such actions, to include in its proceedings aspects such as telephone “conversations” between him as a defense attorney and Fresneda as a client; as well as telephone conversations between Francisco Fernández Sevilla and the also leader of UGT Andalucía Carmen Castilla, current PSOE deputy in Congress for Seville, the latter expressing her complaints that she had been compared to the former socialist president of the Junta de Andalucía, Susana Díaz, because of how “ugly” the PSOE leader would be, in her words.
A series of conversations, according to Federico Fresneda’s lawyer, “aired in the media”, insisting that all this “inquisitorial instruction” has meant the “violation of fundamental rights”, an idea to which the defenses of the former Secretary of Economic Management, María Chapín; and the former head of the UGT-A Purchasing Department, Dolores Sánchez.
