In L’Aldea, the Prosecutor’s Office is asking for 5 years and 2 months for Ferré: “He was not a mere worker”

The Prosecutor's Office requests 5 years and 2 months of imprisonment for Daniel Ferré. The request has been reduced due to undue delays in a case that erupted in 2012 and has now, finally, been set for judgment at the Tarragona Court of Appeal.

The Aldea cooperative, however, raises the claim up to 23 and a half years. The other accused, a supplier of the entity, has accepted three months in prison for forgery of a commercial document and a fine of 4 euros per day for two months.

The Prosecutor's Office reduces the request for the former manager

For the residents of Aldea, the trial puts figures on a bankruptcy that affected an entity deeply rooted in the municipality and that has dragged on for more than a decade of delay.

What sentence does the Prosecutor’s Office request now?

The Prosecutor’s Office has set the request for the former manager Daniel Ferré at 5 years and 2 months of imprisonment, after applying the circumstance of undue delays. The case broke out in 2012 and has not gone to trial until now.

The public prosecutor also requests a fine of 6,700 euros. This figure is well below what the cooperative’s representation demands, which asks for 162,000 euros as an economic sanction.

The civil liability claimed by the two accusations, however, coincides in an amount close to 1,790,000 euros. The difference between the parties is not minor: prison, fines, and economic reparation are on very different scales.

What does the Cooperative accuse the former manager of?

The Prosecutor's Office and the private accusation attribute five crimes to Ferré: accounting forgery, forgery of commercial documents, breach of trust in administration, asset stripping, and misappropriation.

The prosecutor has described a situation that, according to his intervention, was not simply a management problem. “Ferré’s actions did not create a situation of risk, but of collapse,” he stated. And he added: “The accounting did not reflect reality.”

The Prosecutor’s Office maintains that Ferré had been manager for 20 years and had accumulated six five-year terms at the cooperative. According to the accusation, he had all powers, both notarized and those derived from internal trust, and he was the one who “made and unmade” within the entity.

The figures at the core of the accusation

The Ebre Reader will find here the most concrete point of the trial: invoices, investments, and money which, according to the accusation, would have left the cooperative’s circuit.

Which operations does the accusation consider irregular?

The private accusation pointed to the existence of invoices worth 3 million euros that appeared as pending payment but which, according to their version, were fictitious and served to disguise the accounts.

The cooperative’s lawyer also spoke of millionaire investments that would have mortgaged the entity and its credit section. Additionally, he stated that Ferré would not have delivered the separate balances of the different sections to the inspectors, which would have made the detection of irregularities difficult.

Regarding misappropriation, the accusation focused on a deposit contract with Banesto valued at 160,000 euros. According to the lawyer, Ferré would have resolved the contract directly to his current account.

The accusation’s thesis is that, if he wanted to dispose of the money as a depositor, he should have requested it from the cooperative. He would not have done so because he knew the entity was insolvent and that he could not recover it, according to the presentation made during the trial.

What role do they attribute to him within the Cooperative?

The cooperative’s representation has defended that all witnesses pointed to Ferré as the final person responsible for the accounting actions. The accusation emphasized that the only people who did not do so were his wife and children.

The lawyer placed Ferré’s career within the entity as a decisive fact. He started in 1981, and in 1996 he presented himself as a possible manager before the governing council, which accepted him.

The accusation’s reading is clear: Ferré would not have been just another worker, but the person who managed all aspects of the cooperative. For this reason, he is attributed direct criminal and civil responsibility in the entity’s collapse.

The Prosecutor’s Office has followed a similar line, although with a much lower final request. The prosecutor stressed that it was unlikely the manager was unaware of what was happening, because he accumulated years of command and had broad powers.

The Defense distributes the Responsibility

For the defense, the case cannot be loaded onto a single person: the governing council had the utmost responsibility over the cooperative's operation, and Ferré was not part of it.

Why does the Defense request acquittal?

The defense argues that Ferré was not the only one responsible for issuing the accounts. If there were other people with control functions who have not been charged and who did not commit any crime, he argues, neither should his client be condemned.

The lawyer acknowledged that the former manager held broad powers but recalled that the director and other executive officers had them as well. The defense insisted that the annual accounts are legally prepared by the governing council, not the manager.

During his intervention, he questioned whether Ferré had the necessary knowledge to prepare the accounts. “Ferré does not have specialized studies — in economics —” he said before asking what capacity he had to prepare annual accounts that according to the law corresponded to the governing council.

The defense rejected that the governing council members were simple farmers without decision-making capacity. Their argument is that responsibility could not be concentrated on Ferré while other potential implicated parties did not face criminal charges.

What does the former manager deny according to his lawyer?

The defense has ensured that there is no evidence that the cooperative’s collapse was caused by Ferré’s activity. It also denies that his client carried out any fictitious operation or participated in a fixed asset revaluation.

This is the central clash of the trial: for the accusations, Ferré controlled the entity and knew about irregularities; for the defense, he had powers but was not the one to assume sole responsibility for the accounts.

The other accused, a supplier of the cooperative, has accepted charges of forgery of a commercial document as a sole offense. The agreed sentence is three months in prison and a fine of 4 euros per day for two months.

The trial was set for judgment this Friday. Now it will be the court that must decide whether to give more weight to the accusations’ version, which speak of collapse and million-euro damages, or to the defense, which demands acquittal and distributes responsibilities among the cooperative’s governing bodies.

The bankruptcy of the Aldea cooperative remains pending a judicial resolution after a procedure started following the events of 2012. Requests range from the Prosecutor’s 5 years and 2 months to the private accusation’s 23 and a half years, with nearly 1,790,000 euros of civil liability disputed. The court now has the final word.

Source of the article: Eloi Tost / Catalan News Agency