Use and abuse of the ERE pardon

We should not be surprised that those convicted of the ERE fraud in Andalusia have received with indignation the announcement, strange and untimely, that the acting Government of Pedro Sánchez has decided to reactivate the pardon of all of them. Nothing should surprise us because dignity, when you have it, does not know about bars. Like that Andalusian day laborer, in times of the Republic, when the chief of the town approached him and threw him a handful of coins, the same ones with which he bought votes and wills.. The laborer looked at him intently and threw the coins aside: “in my hunger I am in charge.”. What is the point now that the Government of Pedro Sánchez announces that it has decided to activate the pardon of the ERE? It makes no sense whatsoever and gives off an unmistakable air of manipulation, which many of the condemned politicians of the ERE could well paraphrase the day laborer, in my prison I rule.

Above all, those who have already begun to enjoy the third degree in the prison regime, as happened last June with José Antonio Viera, one of the signatories, as advisor, of the famous document by which the reptile fund was created to grant subsidies and aid to companies, without any control. Or like the former president of the Junta de Andalucía, José Antonio Griñán, who is not even likely to go to jail, due to the serious illness he suffers from.. The last thing that the Provincial Court of Seville decided, which sentenced him, was to grant him a five-year suspension for his entry into prison.. If we think that Griñán is 77 years old, it is normal that, at the end of that period, at 82 years old, he will never have to go to prison. With which, we return to the first thing: now that many of them, all former senior officials of the Andalusian administration, have gone through the public humiliation of finding themselves behind bars, why does the Government say that it has given the order to reactivate their pardons? , although he cannot do anything either because he is in office.

All of the above would simply seem absurd if we did not suspect that, in politics, these types of announcements always pursue an end, which may be very different from what is proclaimed.. Let us think, for example, that some of the Moncloa advisors have thought it convenient to do so to see if news like that about the ERE, which always causes a stir in public opinion due to the multi-million dollar volume of fraud, serves to compensate or dilute the growing scandal of the amnesty for Catalan independentists. It wouldn't also be the first time this has happened.. Already in December of last year, when it was decided to modify the Penal Code, with the suppression of the crime of sedition and the reduction of embezzlement, those convicted of the ERE ended up exploding when they sensed that they wanted to be used.

It was, precisely, Griñán's lawyer, former socialist deputy José María Mohedano, who echoed the discomfort in an interview with Alsina on Onda Cero. Mohedano, a member of the Association for the Defense of Transition Values, then revealed that “some people from the Government or Government envoys” had tried to convince them that this reform could benefit them too, so that they would be in favor of the changes. But the ERE convicts rejected it outright: “Mr. Griñán and the other convicts consider that this embezzlement reform is an affront because it makes them enter into a package in favor of the independentists of Esquerra Republicana, and that is an indignity and an insult to them”.

The announcement by the Minister of Justice, Pilar Llop, full of contradictions and legal inaccuracies, abounds in suspicions of the tortuous use of the Andalusian socialists' request for pardon. What the minister said is that the processing of those nine pardons was being carried out “normally, in the same way as all the others”, and that, in any case, this Government could not resolve it “when it was in office.”. Neither statement is supported.. Firstly, a government in office can grant pardons because it is not the first time that such an issue has arisen and the Supreme Court resolved it almost twenty years ago.. It was the Third Chamber, in ruling 8303/2005, of December 2, that considered that the denial of a pardon is a matter that can be included within the concept of ordinary office because, as the pardon refers to a specific case , has no meaning of political orientation.

Aside from the discrepancies that may be had with that ruling, what is striking is that the Minister of Justice, nor her advisors, are aware of that ruling.. Nor is the statement that the ERE pardons are being processed “like all the others” rigorous.. The processing of pardons is not guided by an established rule, with set deadlines, but rather obeys the interest of the Government. Sometimes, the granting of pardons is accelerated and, in others, it lasts forever, and the files end up lost in some drawer of the Ministry. Pardons for those convicted of the 2007 Catalan sedition, for example, were only activated when President Pedro Sánchez considered it appropriate..

Until 2020, the president always repeated when asked that “pardons are not on the table” and that, furthermore, it made no sense.. “Once the sentence is known, the pardon debate falls under its own weight, first of all because of the position I established the day the Supreme Court's sentence was known.. But, secondly, even by the independence leaders themselves who have said that they do not want a pardon, some with very strong phrases,” Sánchez said at the end of 2019.. He was referring to statements by Oriol Junqueras in which he invited the Government to “put the pardon in wherever it fits.” A year and a half later, the criteria radically changed and the pardon for the independence supporters was accelerated. The case of the ERE is similar, but only in political intention: the request was made in September of last year, when the final ruling of the Supreme Court was known, and it has only been publicly activated on two occasions, at the end of that year. when the aforementioned reform of the Penal Code was being processed in favor of the Catalan independentists and now, when an amnesty law is being negotiated, in favor of them. That is to say, something more than coincidences to be able to conclude that yes, it is normal for those affected by the ERE of Andalusia to reject the use and abuse of their pardons, always to benefit third parties.