The voice of the Prosecutor’s Office was heard for the first time this Wednesday in the trial against The Pujol case. Fernando Bermejo, anti-corruption prosecutor, vehemently opposed the request of the defense of the Pujol family and the accused entrepreneurs (19 people in total) to cancel the trial for an alleged violation of rights. Bermejo – who replaces her colleague who led the cause for almost a decade, Belén Suárez, and who had to study thousands of pages in just a few weeks – criticized the Pujols’ allusion to Operation Catalonia, the alleged “maneuvers” of some police officers against the leaders of the processes. “It is not possible to introduce political issues into a trial for money laundering, illicit association, forgery and tax crimes,” said the representative of the public prosecutor, who insisted on the legality of the evidence collected and the fairness of the entire trial.
The defense of Josep and Oriol Pujol Ferrusola, two of the seven children of the former Catalan president, had denounced that the case was contaminated by the intervention of the patriotic policewhich results in the declaration of the former lover of the firstborn, Victoria Álvarez, who ended up receiving the funds reserved by the State; the pressure on the directors of the Private Bank of Andorra (BPA), where the Pujols had hidden their assets; or data theft resulting in a USB stick and incorporated into the investigation (and then expelled). Bermejo downplayed these anomalies and assured that “none of the evidence was manipulated”, but that all “was obtained in full respect of the rights of the defendants”, which is why he asked the court of the National Tribunal not to accept any of the defendants’ requests and to continue the trial. “The defenses tried to turn political rumors into grounds for annulment.”
The judicial investigation into the Pujol family actually has two origins, like two tributaries which then joined and formed a single river. The first was the testimony, in December 2012, of Victoria Álvarez, who had been the lover of Jordi Pujol Ferrusola. Álvarez said he saw him move large sums of money between Catalonia and Andorra; and he also spoke about his exploits abroad. That testimony led to the opening of proceedings in the National Court against the clan’s eldest son, a decision that Bermejo defended. “This statement is a crime news this legitimizes the authorities to launch an investigation”.
Bermejo challenged the defense, rhetorically, to “prove in the oral trial” that Álvarez was forced to testify. They will still have the opportunity to do so: the defense of the ex-wife of JuniorMercè Gironès, he cited you as a witness. However, neither the Prosecutor’s Office nor the Pujols defense did so, for whom Álvarez remains an inconvenient figure: some will have to face the possibility that he recognizes having collected funds reserved by the State for a few years; the others, how the fuss over the 500 euro banknotes is put back on the table (and in front of public opinion).
The two origins of the ‘Pujol case’
There is a second origin, a second crime news equally valid, the prosecutor recalled: the statement released by Jordi Pujol on July 25, 2014, in which he acknowledged that his family had hidden assets abroad for more than three decades. According to what he said then former presidentthe money came from an inheritance from his father, Florenci Pujol. The confession, which shocked Catalan society, came two weeks later The world will publish screenshots with the bank deposits of several family members in Andorra. For the defense, this graphic evidence was the cause of the opening of the proceedings and, since they claim that it was obtained illicitly (pressure on the administrators of the BPA), it must be set aside, as well as everything that was obtained from it.
The Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office denied this thesis: “The world publishes and Pujol declares freely and voluntarily. Nobody is forcing him to testify.” This information has a “journalistic value”, but had no judicial “effects”. The statement has “an objective reference which implies the opening of a proceeding”, Bermejo recalled. A court in Barcelona opened a case on the basis of the unusual confession which would then be incorporated into the one already opened before against the eldest son in the National Court. And this tortuous path is what led to the trial against the Pujols, opened this week after more than a decade.
There is no reason to “cancel” the process
This Wednesday, the third day of the trial, was important for the defendants. After their lawyers’ request to stop the trial, they wanted to hear what the prosecutors (Prosecution Service and State Attorney’s Office) had to say before the court ruled on December 10. For this reason, even though the court allowed them to be absent until the day they testify (in the spring of next year), some have decided to remain in the courtroom. And they heard how Bermejo tried to dismiss all the annulment motions; relying, in large part, on the “clean” orders of the investigating judge José de la Mata.
“There is no prospective investigation here. The Supreme Court reiterated that there is a prospective investigation when it is explored blindly. But there were concrete indications here,” the prosecutor’s representative stressed.
Alone in front of the lawyers, the prosecutor took an hour to reject the annulment requests. It supported the jurisdiction of the National Court to prosecute the facts because the operations aimed at hiding the origin of the funds were carried out abroad (“the capital movements aimed at hiding the illicit funds obtained in Spain were carried out outside Spain”); he denied that the facts required it; He defended the judge’s orders, confirmed by higher authorities… And he rejected, in particular, that the indictment caused the impotence of the defenses because it is, as they denounced, “inconcrete”. Bermejo said both the antecedent of the crime of money laundering and other issues must be discussed, in any case, in the oral trial, which is why he got this far.
The State Attorney’s Office joined the prosecutor’s counterattack and supported the origin of the investigation against the Pujol clan. One of the representatives of this public prosecution, José Ignacio Ocio, defended the legality of the request for collaboration with Andorra after the former president’s confession in 2014. The legislation, he said, does not prevent the use of “truthful” information published in the media. And he underlined that the letter rogatory was based “on the open letter to citizens” from Pujol himself. “That news was so truthful that it motivated the baroque explanation that Mr. Pujol gave about the existence of accounts and funds abroad for decades.”
