The Spanish Supreme Court on Tuesday (July 26th) confirmed the convictions in 2019 of former heavyweights of Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s Socialist Party in one of the biggest corruption scandals in the country’s recent history.
Spain’s highest judicial body has ratified most of the sentences handed down at first instance in November 2019 against 19 former senior socialist officials in the region of Andalusia (south) for having embezzled hundreds of millions of euros from public funds intended to help redundant workers and companies in difficulty.
Three relaxed people
Andalusian regional president from 2009 to 2013 and minister in the 1990s under Felipe Gonzalez, José Antonio Griñan (76) will therefore have to serve a six-year prison sentence, in particular for embezzlement of public funds. He was also sentenced to 15 years of ineligibility. His predecessor, Manuel Chaves (77), socialist baron several times minister and Andalusian president from 1990 to 2009, saw his sentence to nine years of ineligibility confirmed for prevarication (serious breach of the obligations of a mandate). Just like another former minister, Magdalena Alvarez, 70, who received the same sentence in 2019.
On the other hand, the Court acquitted three people sentenced in 2019 to ineligibility sentences and reduced the sentence of a fourth person from seven to three years in prison. This affair, dubbed ERE (Spanish acronym for social plans) dealt a blow to the Socialist Party in its historic stronghold of Andalusia, the most populous region of Spain, which it led for 36 years until it was be dislodged from power by the conservative People’s Party (PP) in early 2019.
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After the convictions at first instance, Pedro Sanchez and his government defended themselves by saying that these were past events for which the current leadership of the Socialist Party could not be held responsible. Pedro Sanchez himself came to power in June 2018 after the overthrow by Parliament of his conservative predecessor Mariano Rajoy, via a motion of censure, following the conviction of the PP in a mega-corruption affair.