The judge investigates another 18 former senior officials from the PSOE stage in the Andalusian Government for the injection of millionaire funds to Santana Motor "without any control"

Seville judge José Ignacio Vilaplana makes a qualitative leap in the investigation into the injection of million-dollar public funds "without any control" into the Linares Futuro Plan that the Andalusian Government, during the PSOE period, launched to try to relocate the 750 workers who were left on the street after the closure of Santana Motor in 2011. In total, the socialist Government spent more than 600 million euros in trying to refloat a company that eventually closed.

In a lengthy order released this Tuesday, the judge cites another 18 former senior officials of the Andalusian Government as being investigated and demands extensive documentation to analyze how public funds were transferred. In Santana, the model that the Andalusian Government established years before in the ERE scheme was used, through financing transfers and through the IDEA Agency, also known as the payment fund for irregular EREs.

The new investigators in the Santana case are scheduled to appear in court between November 24 and December 1, in the middle of the electoral campaign and just after the general elections on November 29. Five days before the elections, Antonio Ávila Cano, who was Minister of Economy, Innovation and Science of the Board between 2010 and 2013, must testify. He was a senior official of the highest confidence of the then president José Antonio Griñán. Another of those investigated is Juan María González, nephew of Felipe González. The judge has agreed to these summonses, following the request of the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office.

This case, which began to be investigated in March of last year, analyzes alleged crimes of administrative prevarication and embezzlement. It joins another that the same judge has been processing since 2022 on the flow of public money between Santana, the Junta de Andalucía and a network of companies, with the excuse of reviving the Linares company. In this case, the husband of the former director of the Civil Guard, the socialist María Gámez, was investigated, although the instructor finally exonerated him of any responsibility. However, both in the new piece on Santana Motor and the Linares Futuro Plan, and in the 2022 piece, Bienvenido Martínez Martínez, former director of the IDEA Agency, former president of Santana and brother-in-law of María Gámez, appears as an investigator.

The order with the new summons, advanced by Abc and released this Tuesday by the Press Office of the Superior Court of Justice of Andalusia (TSJA), places the origin of the case in the minutes that were signed on February 14, 2011 between the former workers of Santana Motor, the representatives of UGT and CCOO and the ministries of Economy, Innovation and Science and the Ministry of Employment. There is a pre-retirement plan financed with public funds for former workers of the Santana Motor Group with great benefits, since compensation of up to 95,000 euros per employee was foreseen.