On Tuesday The Client posted the information. Alfredo de Miguel, former leader of Araba Buru Batzar, has assumed new responsibilities in public administration after being convicted by the courts for corruption in December 2019. According to the media, De Miguel works as a “manager” of the Maritime Development Association and in the documentation of the European Union appears as a “manager” of the community. De Miguel participated on official trips, inter-territorial meetings or meetings of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. He has given lectures and received awards. In response to this information, the Hazi Foundation, attached to the Department of Economic Development, Sustainability and the Environment of the Basque Government, has published an extensive “explanatory note”.

“Alfredo De Miguel has no trust, free designation, or political positions (...) he has no position as a ‘manager’, and has a position in it, but as a work worker,” the first point of the note says. He recalls that De Miguel was re-employed by the Foundation in April 2010 (he was arrested by the Police in March 2010 for corruption and left public offices linked to politics), following the suspension of his leave. “This labor recognition gives him the right to participate in internal processes and on July 10, 2015 an internal call for the selection of a technician from the Area of Entrepreneurship and Rural and Coastal Dynamization”, explains the foundation. De Miguel was presented to this call and “obtained the highest score”. Since then I would work in the Maritime Development Association and the foundation has underlined that the Works Committee stated that this process was developed “properly”.

They are not the only improvements De Miguel has made as a Hazi worker since the lawsuit against him began. In March 2020 it was known that it had achieved three wage increases and a rise in charges. The director of the foundation, Asier Arrese, also explained that everything was legal in a hearing before the Parliament of Vitoria.

Law or not

The Foundation says it has acted with “transparency” and complied with the law respecting Miguel’s rights as a worker. De Miguel and other convicted colleagues resorted to grief in 2019, and the foundation says that until the supreme dictates the resolution and the sentence is firm, it cannot take any other decision. The same idea has been repeated these days by both the Government and the section headed by Arantza Tapia. According to journalist Iker Rioja, who published the information, the foundation had the opportunity not to admit De Miguel as a worker: if the 2019 Hazi collective agreement had been condemned to more than six years for economic crimes that allowed the dismissal of its members, and does not specify that the sentence should be “firm”.

“These are not easy decisions”

Despite the defense of its activity, the foundation has recognized that the information has generated an agitation: “the Hazi foundation understands that society does not understand the situation and recognizes that the decisions made about this person are not easy for the organization itself”. The last point of the note concerns the possibility of “making a decision” when the judgment is final: “A firm judgment, in any direction, will allow the Hazi Foundation and its dependent department to make a decision with legal and administrative criteria.” More than three years have passed since the High Court of Justice of Álava in December 2019 sentenced De Miguel and other members of the PNV leadership in Álava for corruption to several years in prison, and the Supreme is expected to pronounce in the first quarter of 2023.