The “Operation Catalonia” it hasn’t come up now. It was known about her for the first time in 2015, thanks to the investigation that Internal Affairs opened against the retired commissioner José Manuel Villarejo in relation to the case of Little Nicholas. For this reason, the defense briefs in the Pujol case already they mention her. However, the news that is taking place these days, with new audios or the detailed knowledge of the annotations of the main accused of the police sewers, It will make its lawyers consider requesting the incorporation into the procedure of those tests that were not known and the testimony of its protagonists, legal sources informed this newspaper.
That may include former Interior Minister Jorge Fernández Díaz, after hearing him meet with Villarejo in ‘El País’ and the digital ‘Informed Sources’. Villarejo himself and the other police officers involved in “Operation Catalonia” had already been proposed as witnesses, such as the former head of Internal Affairs Marcelino Martin-Blas or the former number two of the Police Eugene Pinefirst sentenced from the police sewers for trying to introduce a ‘pendrive’ of dubious origin in the Pujol case itself.
When the trial begins
At the beginning of the trial, in preliminary questions, it is the the only time when the parties can raise the inclusion of new evidenceso it will be at that time when they request the inclusion of testimonies that did not originally appear in the defense briefspresented in October of last year, and that they consider relevant.
Both that of Jordi Pujol Ferrusola, and that of the rest of his family, began with “Operation Catalonia”: “The present cause finds origin and impulse in the initiative outside all procedural legality and judicial control carried out by a group of officials of the National Police Corps that sponsored and activated the report of the complaint aimed at the initiation of the same”, in reference to the one filed by Victoria Alvarez, ex-partner of the eldest son of the Pujol-Ferrusola marriage. Her statement and that of the former president of the Catalan PP Alicia Sanchez-Camacho was already requested by the ex-wife of Jordi Pujol Junior, Mercé Girones.
Among the witnesses already proposed are Villarejo, his partner, Raphael RoundPino and Martín-Blas, but also Bonifacio Diez Sevillanochief inspector attached to the Deputy Directorate of Operations stationed in Andorra, and Celestine Barrososecurity attache at the Spanish Embassy in Andorra”, of which the documents say that “deployed a coercive harassment operation on the property and executives and employees of the Banca Privada d’Andorra (BPA) in order to break their will and professional duties and obtain from them information about the Pujol Ferrusola family”.
for the screenshot
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He adds that they achieved their goals through “a copy of a screenshot that would be leaked to ‘El Mundo’ on 7.7.2014 in which the account movements of the transfer/initial income from Andbank to BPA by different members of the family” of the former president of the Generalitat. On the 25th of that same day, Jordi Pujol issued a statement in which he admits the existence of “a legacy from his father in favor of his wife and children located abroad”.
The defense briefs also recall that “this exorbitant and illegal activity has given rise to two criminal proceedings in the Principality of Andorra“, one for revealing bank secrets and the other for coercion and threats, in which former Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy and his ministers appear as defendants, among others. Cristobal Montoro and Jorge Fernandez Diaz.