The Ministry of Labor has asked the Prosecutor’s Office this week to investigate whether the Mazón Government committed a crime of administrative prevarication by annulling several labor sanctions of the Inspection on companies for not protecting their employees during the damage or for exposing them to risks in the catastrophe, including the case of the death of a worker, according to sources from Yolanda Díaz’s department told elDiario.es.
The second vice president and Minister of Labor already publicly denounced in Congress in October that the Government of Carlos Mazón in the Valencian Community had annulled several fines that the Labor Inspection had imposed for labor violations on DANA day. At least, the inspectors imposed more than 106 sanctions, according to the data that emerged after the catastrophe.
Among the annulled procedures are those affecting the Valencian public television station À Punt, which was fined 50,000 euros, as well as a penalty that the Labor Inspection imposed on a company for the death of a worker. According to Yolanda Díaz at the end of the year, in another parliamentary intervention, the company had forced her to work in full red alert, outside of her working hours and putting her life at risk, as her family explained to the newspaper. The Provinces.
Sources from the Generalitat Valenciana remind that the minutes of the Inspection “do not constitute firm sanctions”, but rather proposals for infringement that must be legally analyzed by the competent labor authority before issuing the corresponding administrative resolution.
In this context, they point out that the resolutions adopted by the Generalitat “have been issued after the processing of the legally established procedure, based on technical reports and individualized legal analysis of each file, within the legitimate exercise of the powers that the legal system attributes to the regional labor authority.”
Thus, they emphasize that the Generalitat Valenciana “confirmed the sanction proposed by the Inspection in six companies.” “This action demonstrates an individualized, technical evaluation based on strictly legal criteria,” they indicate, which is why they reject “any suggestion of arbitrary action.”
Complaint “administrative prevarication”
The Ministry of Labor and Social Economy has transferred this annulment of several sanctioning procedures to the Prosecutor’s Office “so that it can investigate whether these may constitute a crime of administrative prevarication,” indicate sources from the Díaz department.
In its article 404, the Penal Code includes as a crime of prevarication of public officials, “the authority or public official who, knowing of his injustice, dictates an arbitrary resolution in an administrative matter”, and provides that “he will be punished with the penalty of special disqualification for employment or public office and for the exercise of the right of passive suffrage for a period of nine to fifteen years.”
In Labor they indicate that the Provincial Labor and Social Security Inspection of Valencia had imposed these sanctions for the work accidents that occurred in factas well as due to the serious risks that some workers were exposed to during the dana of October 29, 2024.
This is a revocation of numerous acts of infringement of the Labor Inspection officers by the labor authority, the General Directorate of Labor of the Valencian Community in this case, something that is not at all frequent, according to sources consulted on the operation of these labor sanctions.
For example, in the case of the annulment of the fine of 50,000 euros to the television station À Punt, the General Directorate of Labor of the Generalitat Valenciana, which was then directed by Andrés Lluch Figueres (since December María Lurueña Ruiz), annulled the sanction imposed and ordered the filing of the file considering that, although “the authorities sent alerts and recommendations due to the heavy rains”, “the information that was detailed did not predict its virulence and the effects extraordinary things that they caused.”
Sources from the Generalitat indicate that the events analyzed occurred during the dana, “an extraordinary meteorological phenomenon” that generated an emergency situation with serious human and material consequences, and that “this exceptional context must necessarily be taken into account” in the legal assessment of the files.
“In certain cases, the labor authority appreciated the concurrence of circumstances linked to an extraordinary episode of force majeure, an element that can legally exclude or limit administrative liability when the events occur in a context of unforeseeable emergency,” the Valencian Government points out.
Includes a fatal accident
In these files, the inspection confirmed “the lack of adoption, by the companies, of the necessary preventive measures to guarantee the safety and integrity of their workers,” the Ministry of Labor indicates, which caused them to be subjected to situations of serious risk that, in one of the cases, “materialized in the death of a worker.”
“These files were annulled by the Valencian labor authority in a totally unjustified manner, consciously avoiding sanctions to the companies for the serious facts revealed by the acting inspectors, which is why we consider the decision to be revealed as arbitrary and possibly criminal,” the Díaz Ministry maintains.
The Valencian Generalitat defends its management and adds that it will collaborate “fully with any investigative action that may be carried out, providing all the necessary documentation to prove that the decisions adopted fully comply with the legal system.”
In the Valencian Government – now led by Juanfran Pérez Llorca – they add that “the priority of public institutions must continue to be respect for the victims of DANA, the recovery of the affected areas and institutional responsibility in the face of a tragedy that deeply marked Valencian society, preventing these events from being the subject of interested interpretations or political use.”
Source: www.eldiario.es
