The Court that investigates the suicide of a merchandise employee who suffered workplace harassment has expanded the list of investigated and has called to declare an old high position of this public company for next November. Jesús Moreno, who was then General Secretary of Mercasa and today is the General Director of the Contentious in the State Advocacy, will have to appear as investigated in a case in which other senior positions and former directors of the public entity have already been charged as its current financial director or the direct top of the deceased.
The events occurred shortly before the Pandemic statement, when José Ramón Sempere was the president of the company who since last year presides over former Minister José Miñones.
Jorge SC’s family found his body in the bathroom of his house in the early hours of March 2, 2020. The Supreme Court ended up determining by the social jurisdiction that his death had been a work accident and that, by then, he had been suffering harassment and work overload for years. He had two decades in this public company in the food distribution sector, participated by the State Society of Industrial Participations (SEPI) and the Ministry of Agriculture and among its tasks was to prepare the annual budgets.
The pressure in the company, according to different reports and judicial resolutions, began to increase in 2017 when an operation of the National Court against Corruption took a good part of the company’s dome and this worker, in addition to being the link with the Civil Guard to provide information to the judge, assumed his workload. Then, according to the investigation, the “encounters” and the “bad weather” began in the financial department of the public company. The worker’s suicide letters were not only addressed to his wife and little son. He also spoke to his teammates.
“I apologize to all my colleagues, how I have been able to make mistakes, I don’t deserve to live,” he said in one of them. “They reduce template, they warn me late of things, they act on their own, they attack me, below and on the sides I am a collateral victim of the times. End,” he said in another. Indications that add to an audit and that, in addition to serving to qualify their suicide as a work accident, have promoted criminal investigation for possible criminal harassment by their superiors.
Agustín García-Cabo, who currently remains a financial economic director of the company, already declared as accused to deny knowing anything about a conflicting situation around Jorge SC and his superior, Marta Olalquiaga, another of the accused who also denied having treated the deceased badly. Several witnesses told the Municipal Police how Olalquiaga was “always behind Jorge’s table, asking and recriminating all day with an haughty attitude.” In person and by email “Monday to Sunday at any time, even at dawn.” The third person investigated from the beginning is Maite Valls, responsible for human resources and occupational hazards at that time, who has not yet declared.
High position in the State Advocacy
Jesús Moreno has become the charged room of the cause. At that time he was Secretary General and the Council of Mercasa, at the right hand of the company’s presidency, and since the beginning of 2023 he is a general director of the contentious of the State Advocacy, one of the most relevant positions within a department for whose hands the laws are passed by laws that already affect laws of the State. He has been called to declare for next November as investigated, according to the documentation that Eldiario.es has been able to examine.
Moreno was a manager of Mercasa when Jorge SC took his life – death that internally came to be presented as a heart attack – and was also, according to the judge in his citation, his “ultimate person in charge of the personnel area”. It was the one who replaced Macarena Olona in that position, with José Ramón Sempere as president. And the widow of the deceased, who exercises the particular accusation in the case, has been requesting her imputation since the opening of the first proceedings in Court 29 of Madrid.
A part of the case is to elucidate whether in Mercasa there were mechanisms for prevention of occupational hazards, day control and to avoid possible conflicting and harassment situations. And in the Court it was a former member of his Company Committee who said that Moreno was the “head of personnel” general secretary. Valls, another of the accused, was even a person without “internal legitimation” to make decisions and claims were addressed to the State’s lawyer.
“Exactly,” this worker replied to the judge when asked if the anti -racious protocol existed, but “it did not apply.” Moreno, said this witness, was the “head responsible” and who had “ability” to launch prevention measures that did not exist. When one of the risk assessments that showed the danger of overloading in which the employees of some Mercasa departments were, the response of the secretary general now accused was “quite frustrating” according to this witness: “He told us that the results were not believed.”
The State Advocacy, which represents Jesus Moreno and other accused in this case, has presented several writings in recent weeks requesting the file of the cause by prescription or also by the expiration of the instructional terms throughout the processing of the cause.
Source: www.eldiario.es
