The Court of Auditors has already received all the resources of those investigated for undue expenses in the external promotion of the you process, with the doubt about whether he will have time to resolve them before the renovation of the institution. These appeals intend that the court renounce its decision not to accept the guarantees granted by the Catalan Administration – specifically, by the Catalan Institute of Finance – to the 34 former high-ranking officials accused of having wasted 5.4 million euros to promote independence plans abroad. The rapporteur for this resolution – if there are no replacements before – will be the president of the Prosecution Section, José Manuel Suárez Robledano, appointed in his day to the court at the proposal of the PP. The other two members of the Chamber are María Antonia Lozano and Felipe García Ortiz, proposed by the PSOE and IU, and by the PSOE, respectively.
The Generalitat has appealed against the denial of these guarantees, considering that it was based on value judgments for which the examining delegate had no powers. Along the same lines, the former president of the Generalitat Carles Puigdemont has accused the instructor of having acted in an “arbitrary and illegal” manner, for which he has announced the filing of a complaint to demand responsibility before the criminal jurisdiction.
The expresident Artur Mas also accuses the investigating delegate of “evident excess in the exercise of her powers”, which does not prevent her from facing the required bond with the offer of a property. Both things are compatible, because the contribution of funds or assets gives way to cease the seizure orders when the court has insured the aforementioned 5.4 million euros. For this, the contribution of around 700,000 thousand euros for any of those investigated would still be missing, since their responsibility is considered joint and several.
ERC’s legal representation has already secured 2.2 million euros in this regard, which would cover the responsibilities of its leaders, including Oriol Junqueras and Raül Romeva. However, those 2.2 million euros could be made available to depositors again if the appeals filed against the denial of the guarantees are successful.
The appeals insist that the admission of the guarantees does not exonerate those investigated from any responsibility, and that if they are convicted they will have to face directly and personally the payment that is required of them. The thesis of the Generalitat itself is that no administration would see its interests harmed by the fact that guarantees are accepted as collateral.
The reproaches to the examining delegate, Esperanza García, focus on the fact that she based her resolution to reject the guarantees on the fact that the Catalan law that created them does not foresee that they can be used to support senior positions or officials who have acted with fraud ―that is, , with an express will to commit an illicit act – or with gross negligence when using public funds for irregular or improper purposes. The reasoning of the instructor is that those investigated did act under these premises of fraud or negligence, so they are not covered by the law that would allow them to be endorsed in the absence of this circumstance. The appeals, on the other hand, consider that the investigating delegate does not act by virtue of a jurisdictional competence, but at the head of purely administrative proceedings, with which she would lack the competence to make value judgments on the conduct of former senior positions and officials that suppose an anticipated appreciation of responsibilities.
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