The Catalan businessman Jordi Sardà Bonvehiwho was denounced by Gas Natural in 2012 for a gas deal in Ukraine, is the representative of the Russian ‘procés’ plot. Victor TerradellasLink from Carles Puigdemont and person of his trust, declared on Wednesday before the judge of Barcelona Joaquin Aguirre that Sardà came to meet, through his intermediation with the head of the ‘ex-president’s’ office, Josep Lluis Alay, according to the sources consulted by EL PERIÓDICO. That meeting, according to other sources familiar with it, occurred when Alay was already working for the former Catalan president, and in it the “situation in Catalonia in general” was discussed.
In his three-hour statement before the togado, Terradellas made it clear that he and Alay had no special connection and that they each went about their business independently. However, he specified that Sardà, who claimed to represent a group supposedly connected to the Russian state, did comment on his interest in contacting the head of Puigdemont’s office.
The encounter with Madi
Alay has acknowledged that he traveled to Moscow three times in search of support for the Catalan independence process. In two of them he found himself in the Russian capital with Alexander Dmitrenko, the businessman residing in Barcelona to whom the central government has denied Spanish nationality due to his links with the Russian intelligence services. Those trips occurred from March 2019 to February 2020.
The businessman Sardà Bonvehí negotiated with David Madí to create a pro-Russian Catalan media outlet
But it was not the only action carried out by the ‘ex-president”s right-hand man for the Catalan businessman (whose sister is a member of Junts), but he also made arrangements in view of his interest in participating in the creation of a Catalan media related to independence and, of course, pro-Russian. One of the steps he took, according to what he recounted during his interrogation, was with David Madiformer CDC official.
Offer to talk with Putin
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Madí, as explained by Terradellas in court, even offered him to travel to Moscow in September 2018 to meet with the former diplomat Nicolay Sadovnikovwho a year earlier, on October 26, 2017, the eve of the unilateral declaration of independence (DUI), met with Puigdemont at his official residence, the House of the Canonges. But the former CDC official, Terradellas specified, declined the offer.
In his statement, Terradellas not only confirmed the information published by EL PERIÓDICO as a result of a joint investigation with an international consortium of journalists, of which OCCRP and Bellingcat are part, but also admitted that in those meetings he offered Puigdemont financial assistance for an independent Catalonia, sending 10,000 Russian soldiers and the possibility of having, in the future, a videoconference with the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin. Initially, Terradellas assured the judge that the former Catalan president put on a “shocked face”, although he later maintained that he “declined the offer”. According to his explanations, all these contacts were made on his own initiative, not receiving any commission from anyone.