The former general secretary of UGT Andalusia and his leadership, sentenced to three years in prison and a 50 million fine for subsidy fraud

The former general secretary of UGT in Andalusia, Francisco Fernández, and three other former senior officials of the union have been sentenced to three years in prison and a fine of 50 million euros, respectively, as perpetrators of a continuing crime of document falsification in competition with a crime of subsidy fraud for the “conscious and fraudulent application of funds received specifically from subsidy for the implementation of training courses for unemployed and employed people for purposes other than those provided by UGT-A to finance the union’s own activities,” according to the sentence drafted by the Third Section of the Seville Court. The amount defrauded amounts to 40,620,256.3 million euros delivered by the Junta de Andalucía between 2009 and 2013.

In the ruling, which can be appealed in cassation before the Supreme Court, the court draws attention to the “seriousness of the conduct” of those convicted —Fernández, Federico Fresneda, is Secretary General of Administration, María Chapín, former Secretary of Economic Management and the former CEO of Soralpe (a trade union company), Enrique Goicoechea, and “the damage caused to the workers whose training the subsidies were intended for.” A damage that the magistrates extend “to society” in general, due to “the social alarm” produced by the criminal conduct that is the subject of the procedure as they have been “executed by social agents to whom, precisely, subsidies are granted for their proclaimed defense of the interests of workers and the unemployed.

The Seville Court also appeals to the “amount of the subsidies, the amount of what was defrauded and the multiplicity of requests and criminal modalities” through which the union’s former leader used the subsidies for his own purposes regardless of their purpose. Among those procedures used to defraud, which the magistrates define as “fraud mechanics”, is the technique of rappel, by which UGT-A benefited from the discounts that suppliers made on invoices and that they did not declare to the Administration; he botewhich allowed the organization to finance itself from a credit balance generated by paying suppliers of simulated invoices; or the transfer of union premises to Soralpe, which rented the classrooms used for training without generating expenses. “A series of procedures that used different suppliers and related entities in order to obtain a financing channel to cover the union’s own structural expenses at the expense of public funds granted with the subsidies,” the court summarizes them.

In relation to the boat, the court determines that with these invoices the convicts “mendaciously justified to the public Administration expenses attributed to public funds received for training programs.” This fraud mechanism “involved commissioning the different suppliers to issue invoices that did not correspond to any provision of services or supply of goods or that were for a lower amount and went on to add to a creditor account of UGT-A to said companies.” , indicates the room. These invoices “were presented to the administration granting the subsidy, which completed the procedure of diverting for the union’s own purposes the amounts received by the Administration and that were intended for a totally different destination of socio-labor interest,” the authors conclude. judges.

About the technique of rappel establish that, as the bote“it was accounted for and controlled through a computer program through which the union would be financed from a credit balance, generated by paying invoices to suppliers.” The ruling also refers to “other systems for allocating non-eligible expenses”, which include salaries for own and Soralpe employees in training courses when they do not work in them; structure and maintenance expenses of the union (telephone bills, cleaning, electricity…) and the payment of rent for classrooms and facilities owned by UGT-A.

Eight supplier companies were also accused in the case, which have been acquitted by the court on the grounds that “it is not proven that they were aware of the destination that was going to be given to the discounts, commissions or rebates that they had agreed upon and granted to the union.” The magistrates do condemn another of the former members of the union leadership in the years in which the fraud occurred, the former head of the Purchasing Department, Dolores Sánchez, although they reduce her sentence to six months and two days in jail. and a fine of 25 million euros, in his capacity as an accomplice to the same crimes.

The five former senior officials are also imposed as civil liability with the obligation to jointly and severally compensate the Junta de Andalucía in the amount defrauded, 40,620,256.43 euros, with the union UGT-A being the subsidiary civil liability for the total amount.