The State Attorney General’s Office has formalized its claim before the Court of Auditors against more than thirty former senior officials of the Catalan Generalitat in which it figures in €3.4 million the supposed money diverted for the Catalan independence process of 2017, including its foreign promotion.
The claim is divided into two differentiated parts, since it derives from two procedures: on the one hand, the Supreme Court ruling against several members of the Government headed by Carles Puigdemont, and by another from the control carried out by the Court of Auditors on the external action of the Generalitat and the entity called Diplocat.
In the respective provisional settlement minutes of the Court of Auditors, it was calculated that the amount allegedly diverted would amount, in sum, to about 9 million euros, although the Prosecutor’s Office in its lawsuit lowers that figure to 3.4 million.
More than a million for 1-O
According to the State Attorney General’s Office, the lawsuit sets the amount destined for the preparation of the illegal referendum on October 1, 2017 at 1.2 million.
The Supreme Court referred to the Court of Auditors the execution of civil liability for the events that it sentenced in 2018 and that involved convictions of sedition and embezzlement for former Catalan leaders such as Oriol Junqueras.
To calculate the presumed accounting responsibility in the preparation of this referendum, the Prosecutor’s Office only looks at the old charges convicted of the crime of embezzlement, that is, Junqueras and the former ministers Jordi Turull, Raül Romeva and Dolors Bassa, whom it considers jointly responsible .
The lawsuit is also directed against Carles Puigdemont “because of his status as head of the Generalitat”, and includes the former ministers Antoni Comín and Lluís Puig, also fugitives, because, according to the Supreme Court ruling, “they put their departments at the service of nuclear acts of execution”.
The Prosecutor’s Office excludes, however, the ERC deputy Josep Maria Jove -former senior official of the Ministry of Economy and trusted man of Junqueras- and the former director general of Patrimony Francesc Sutrias.
In this part of the lawsuit, the Prosecutor’s Office excludes a series of expenses, such as those related to the commission by the Generalitat to the Unipost postal company for 1-O or the use of public premises, which the Supreme Court excluded from the ruling on unable to determine “the effective damage that such use would have entailed”.
On the contrary, it does include the item destined for the referendum posters: 61,879 euros.
2.2 million for foreign action
The second part of the demand focuses on the foreign action deployed by the Generalitat and the Diplocat in favor of the ‘procés’, including trips by former senior officials or expenses of the different Generalitat delegations abroad.
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According to the statement from the Prosecutor’s Office, “the lawsuit affects presidents and councilors of the two legislatures and people who occupied intermediate steps in the affected departments.”
The public ministry affirms that “the impact on some of those responsible decreases considerably” Regarding the amount claimed by the instructor of the Court of Auditors: 5.4 million to thirty former senior officials such as the former presidents Arthur More and Carles Puigdemont and former Vice President Junqueras.