Filed the piece of the ERE case for aid of 16 million to Heineken when the instruction period expired

SEVILLA, 12 Dic. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The reinforcing magistrate of the Investigating Court number 6 of Seville has agreed to the provisional dismissal and filing of the separate piece of the ERE case for the aid of 16,484,159 euros granted by the Junta de Andalucía to Heineken España S.A. between 2004 and 2008, in which the president and the person in charge of Human Resources of the aforementioned company were listed as being investigated for alleged crimes of administrative prevarication, embezzlement and document falsification, according to an order dated December 1 and notified today Monday to the parties involved in the procedure.

The judge has made this decision after the order of last October in which the Seventh Section of the Provincial Court of Seville upheld an appeal presented by the defense of the two investigated, considering that the investigation period would have been extended in an "extemporaneous" way, as the Superior Court of Justice of Andalusia (TSJA) has recalled in a press release this Monday.

Thus, the Court revoked the order of July 27, 2021 where the examining magistrate agreed to extend and extend the period of investigation of the case for another six additional months, declaring the investigation concluded on October 6, 2017 and leaving without effect the subsequent resolutions on the declaration of complexity and extension and the proceedings whose practice would have been agreed once the initial investigation period (six months) had elapsed and which would have concluded on the aforementioned October 6, 2017.

In his order, the magistrate indicates that, in accordance with the agreement of the Seventh Section of the Hearing, "the decision to extend, extend or set a maximum instruction period for when the initial period elapses must take place before the expiration of the the norm provides, so that in the present case, according to the wording of article 324 of the Criminal Procedure Law then in force, said extension would have to have occurred before the course of six months from the initiation of the case, therefore , before October 6, 2017".

Along these lines, the judge continues, "the period of investigation would have been extended, declaring the complexity of the case extemporaneously, by means of an order dated October 16, 2017 (just ten days after the expiration of the initial period of six months ); and, consequently, as the Chamber affirms" in its order of October 17, 2022, "nothing that has been done afterwards is valid", so that, "after the investigation period has elapsed without having extended or extended the legal term before its expiration --in this case, before October 6, 2017--, 'it would not be possible to carry out any instruction procedure without prejudice to those that may have been agreed prior to that date and could not have been carried out for reasons justified, with the consequences that this will entail from the lack of validity of those carried out after the indicated date.

The magistrate specifies that, after October 6, 2017, and once the investigation period was extended "extemporaneously" (order of July 27, 2021), it would have been agreed to carry out proceedings that, "in view of what was resolved" by the Court, "should be considered invalid", such as the order of August 4, 2018 where it was agreed to call the two persons referred to as investigated and the order of November 22, 2018 where it was refused to hear in statement as being investigated three former high-ranking officials of the Board, agreeing to summon the eleven witnesses requested by the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office.

Next, the judge analyzes the jurisprudential parameters applicable to this specific case and appreciates the "invalidity" of all the proceedings and actions whose practice was agreed as of October 6, 2017, that is, once the procedure "expired", including the statements of the two investigated agreed by order of August 4, 2018.

"Consequently, despite the effective existence of solvent and rational evidence of criminality, it is appropriate to agree to the provisional dismissal of the proceedings since they cannot be those valued, allowing the formal continuation of the procedure through the procedures of the abbreviated procedure with respect to the aforementioned investigated when it results ineffective his mandatory judicial declaration in said condition", he argues.

In this sense, the instructor emphasizes that "it has to abide by the doctrine established and consolidated by the jurisdictional body - Provincial Court of Seville, Seventh Section - with functional competence to resolve the appeals that are filed against the resolutions that are dictate", since, "otherwise, the effective observance of the principle of interdiction of the arbitrariness of public powers guaranteed by article 9.3 of the Spanish Constitution could be put at risk".

All this, adds the judge, "without prejudice to the civil and administrative actions that the Junta de Andalucía could exercise in order to claim the effective compensation derived from the damages and losses caused, specified in the amount (16,484,159.60 euros) of the illegal disposition of public funds released in favor of Heineken Spain".