The Court of Auditors has denied the former president of the Generalitat Carles Puigdemont, who has fled in Belgium since 2017, the possibility of testifying by videoconference in the trial scheduled for next Friday at the supervisory body, in relation to the alleged diversion of public funds for the organization of the illegal 1-O referendum and the foreign promotion of independence projects through Diplocat. Puigdemont, who is being investigated in this file along with 34 other former senior officials and officials of the Generalitat, had requested last week that his intervention take place by videoconference from Belgium, but sources from the Court of Auditors allege that there are technical difficulties in establishing with few margin days a communication system with guarantees.
In the jurisdiction of the Court of Accounts, an investigated person, such as Puigdemont in this case, can be represented by his lawyer. However, the former Catalan president has been summoned to testify on this occasion as a witness by one of the defenses. Puigdemont’s legal representative, lawyer Gonzalo Boye, explained to the court, when requesting that his statement be taken electronically, that the Junts leader “is, for reasons and as a consequence of his position, at this time and in the day scheduled for its declaration, outside Catalonia and Spain.” Therefore, he added, “he will have to make his statement as a witness (…) through videoconference.”
The Prosecutor’s Office claims 3.4 million euros from the accused. The Catalan Civil Society entity, which exercises popular action, raises that amount to 5.3 million euros, but concentrates its claim only on 11 defendants, those who held the main public positions. In the Court of Accounts it has always been taken for granted that Puigdemont would not respond to the summons that was issued to him, given that in Spain the order of Supreme Court judge Pablo Llarena is still in force, for the former Catalan president to be arrested to guarantee his position. at the disposal of justice. That arrest warrant will disappear if the amnesty law is approved, but, for the moment, it is in force.
Puigdemont previously unsuccessfully requested that the hearing be suspended due to his alleged accounting responsibility in the diversion of public funds for the organization of 1-O and the foreign promotion of the processes. Also investigated in this file are the former president of the Generalitat Artur Mas and the former vice president during the Puigdemont era, Oriol Junqueras, as well as several former councilors of the Catalan administration.
The counselor of the supervisory body Elena Hernáez, before whom the hearing will be held, has argued that this intention, that of suspending the trial, was already explained to her in another previous procedural act, that of the previous hearing held on December 16 of the year past. Already on that occasion, the counselor considered that there is full compatibility between the actions of the criminal and accounting jurisdictions, without them necessarily having to condition each other. The resolution also maintains that the Supreme Court’s ruling on the cause of processescontributed by Puigdemont – whose request for suspension was also supported by the defenses of former councilors Antoni Comín, Clara Ponsatí and Lluís Puig – is not applicable to their case, precisely because they have not yet been tried criminally.
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