The PP will call Finance Minister and leader of the PSOE list for Seville, María Jesús Montero, and former CEO José Antonio Griñán, convicted of the ERE case, in the new round of appearances at the Research Center of the Andalusian Foundation for Education and Employment (Faffe). It is a public body of the Junta de Andalucía, founded by former socialist managers and already dissolved, and which is the subject of a court investigation for embezzlement and fraudulent use of public funds.
This commission has been convened for the third time. It was established in the period 2015-2018, but declined with the elections. In the 2019-2022 legislature, the conclusions were approved by the parliamentary committee, but not in plenary, again due to the electoral margin with which there was no final conclusion. And now it comes up again, because Vox registered it that way and the PP, which has the absolute majority, went along with it.
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The popular didn’t want to reveal appearances at first, but changed their minds. PP parliamentary spokesman Toni Martín has today assured that his group will record around 20 appearances when the commission goes back to work next week. Although there is no calendar yet, it is certain that it will coincide with the primary and general election campaigns on July 23. This happened back in November 2019, when Parliament summoned former President Manuel Chaves on the eve of this national election campaign.
Martín has assured that they will summon people who either did not take part in the commission for other reasons or who were present but refused to testify. María Jesús Montero did not attend as she is protected by a legal report that ensures the appearance of senior state officials in autonomous parliaments is not mandatory. These are under the control of Congress, but not under the control of the regional assemblies. This criterion is followed by both the central governments of the PSOE and the PP.
The Popular pointed out that among those quoted would be former President Griñán, who was sentenced to six years in prison for embezzlement in the ERE case. The Seville court is awaiting a coroner’s report to decide whether or not he will go to prison because of his cancer. He will also call former Labor Minister Antonio Fernández, who is serving a seven-year sentence in the Puerto III prison in Cádiz.
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The popular intend to summon the former director of the Faffe Fernando Villén, who is on trial for spending 32,556 euros in brothels with his official cards. The public prosecutor’s office is asking for a six-year prison sentence for the manager. At the hearing, Villén did not reveal the identity of the people who accompanied him to the Don Angelo Club, where he spent 14,700 euros in 15 payments. According to Martín, a new summons could “refresh his memory of who accompanied him on those crazy nights.” In his opinion, this information is relevant because “if there were high officials with political responsibility, it would be absolutely scandalous.”
The oral hearing indicting Villén and the person in charge of the faffe box, Ana Valls, ended this Thursday and on Monday the popular jury will begin deliberating the verdict. In his final conclusions, the anti-corruption prosecutor insisted that the former director of the Faffe had not reimbursed the more than 32,500 euros he had spent in brothels, as his defense alleges, and that Valls had helped offset those expenses to “camouflage” to offset the cost. “Like Juan Palomo, I cook it and eat it. But then there is no invoice for any trip, neither from Valls nor from anyone else,” said the prosecutor, who is maintaining her application for six and four years in prison for embezzlement and forgery. The defense, for its part, asked for a free acquittal for understanding that the police report on which the facts were based was “absolutely speculative”.