Fraud cases related to the training courses that labor unions and management offer have become a common occurrence throughout Spain. A judge is investigating courses offered by the Madrid management group CEIM and suspects that it could have cheated people out of more than 15 million euros, which is nearly double the amount that UGT took in Andalusia.
For now, the Madrid region is asking CEIM to return 4.4 million euros. But the scandal does not stop there. The Minister of Employment is investigating another ten training courses run by the same businessman from Córdoba, José Luis Aneri, who might have been responsible for the Madrid fraud cases. The police should launch a full investigation to root out these incidents of organized crime at the taxpayer's expense. Companies are running imaginary training courses with non-existent students, and their only goal is make a few sharp hucksters rich. Further, people have suspected for years and often proved that training courses such as these are a front for fraud. The only ways to eradicate the fraud are to stymie the courses or create a bidding process for the people who run them. And employer organizations and labor unions should pay for their training with either their own money or money from their partners and business affiliates.
The only way to clean up their image is to totally overhaul their accounts. Governments should also be more vigilant when doling out training subsidies. Bragging about transparency means nothing if there is any real transparency, accounts don not balance and fraud goes uninvestigated.