Ready for sentencing. The trial against the Pujol family ended at 13:49 this Thursday, after 38 sessions, in which more than 200 witnesses and experts appeared, and thirteen years, five months, and one day after the visit of Victoria Álvarez, Jordi Pujol Ferrusola’s former lover, to the Canillas police complex, accompanied by the so-called “patriotic police,” in which she explained that she had seen with her own eyes how Pujol Ferrusola carried bags of cash to Andorra.
Read more An express paella promises to taste Spain in five minutes
The investigation, which was halted until the newspaper El Mundo published seventeen months later banking information about the Pujol accounts in Andorra supposedly obtained by the Spanish police, ended with the entire family charged, as well as ten businessmen, accused of paying them commissions in exchange for public works; since the hearing began in November, one of them, Carles Vilarrubí, has died, and former president Pujol was exonerated on April 27 due to health reasons. None of the accused have exercised their right to the final word.
All defenses request the court for the free acquittal of the accused
The rest await sentencing from today. It could be known by the end of July, according to legal sources.
All defense lawyers who participated on this Thursday – as well as those who did so previously – have requested the free acquittal of their clients.
All of them have dissected the indictment to highlight the weaknesses of the police investigation.
Carles Monguilod, lawyer for Gustavo Buesa – a businessman in the landfill sector – went back to the days when he was hired and began analyzing the case.
The police investigation maintained that the core of the case was the wrongful awarding of public contracts, its relation with the Fundació Albert Pascual and the company Bantridge Holding (of Jordi Pujol Ferrusola): none of these conditions are met. Their businesses were private.
For Monguilod, the case needed “the finesse of a scalpel,” but the investigation and the accusation have been maintained “with blows.”
The fine requested for Buesa, which is set by legislation, “does not match anything” with the allegedly fraudulent operations of his client.
Throughout the trial, prosecutor Fernando Bermejo has spoken several times about the “business windfalls” of Jordi Pujol Ferrusola and some of his partners.
“Perhaps in China, North Korea or Cuba the crime of ‘windfall’ exists, but not here,” argues lawyer Carles Monguilod, “no matter how much emphasis the prosecutor puts on it”
“Perhaps in China, North Korea or Cuba the crime of ‘windfall’ exists, but not here,” maintained lawyer Carles Monguilod, “no matter how much emphasis the prosecutor puts on it.”
Read more Messi reinterprets Wagner
In a forceful plea, this lawyer ended up reproaching the prosecutor for starting his final report accusing the Pujols of looting public coffers while in Catalonia the slogan “Espanya ens roba” was making fortune.
“It is a disgusting slogan and cannot be tolerated,” said the lawyer. “During the investigation by the so-called patriotic police it seemed that the underlying crime was being from the Pujol family or being Catalan.”
Monguilod raised how the trial against the former president’s family generates some fundamental reflections: for example, following the statement of police officer 89,140, whom he did not want to name fully, Álvaro I., who “boasted about the successes with the convictions,” when the Criminal Procedure Law establishes that the police must provide evidence of crimes but also defend the innocent citizen.
He was “like a mix between Dirty Harry and Anacleto, sometimes comical, sometimes scary,” Monguilod described. And the Prosecutor’s Office has accepted the entire police investigation without questioning it, according to the lawyer.
Francesc de Solà, defender of the Andorran helicopter businessman Jorge Barrigón, has presented similar arguments, accusing the Economic and Fiscal Crime Unit (UDEF) of seeking at all costs “criminal cases linked to the Pujols; in this case, Barrigón had a relationship with Josep Pujol, who supposedly gave him a loan that the police consider suspicious.
Óscar Morales, defender of Luis Delso, former president of the Isolux-Corsan Group and personal friend of Jordi Pujol Ferrusola, who had various joint businesses, also began by warning the court about police behavior: in this procedure “the State tried to break free from the chains” that bind it to the laws.
Without “at all” announcing an annulment appeal, Morales recalled that Spain had a transition from “a dark era” in which the State was only State “to becoming a social and rule of law State.”
José María Fuster Fabra, who defended the landfill sector businessman Josep Mayola, stated that this case started “backwards”: with the focus on Jordi Pujol Ferrusola, who was considered a “contaminating financial virus” that splashed anyone who had done business with him.
The defender of Carles Sumarroca Claverol, Diego Artacho, emphasized that his client is not his father, which seems obvious but has served to bring him to the dock: it was Carles Sumarroca Coixet who was in the company Entorn Enginyeria i Serveis, but not the accused. According to the Prosecutor’s Office, this company managed to get wind farms thanks to Oriol Pujol being the Secretary of Industry of the Generalitat, although they actually depended on Medi Ambient.
Sumarroca worked with Jordi Pujol i Ferrusola, who helped him introduce his company EMTE in Mexico, as the invoices in the case prove.
Read more The chefs of the Oxte restaurant, with a Michelin star in Paris, will open alongside Francesc Macià
