A former Treasury high-rank officer points out that the Generalitat could "outwit" the state's control for the 1-O

Agents of the Civil Guard detail their participation in the registries in headquarters of the Generalitat


Reyes Rincon


Madrid 19 MAR 2019 - 20:47 CET

The Ministry of Finance failed to collect evidence that the Generalitat diverted public funds to organize the referendum on October 1, 2017, but does not rule out that it would happen. This was suggested on Tuesday by Felipe Martínez Rico, the former Undersecretary of the Treasury during the procés. Martínez Rico, who has appeared as a witness in the trial held in the Supreme Court, has explained how the Government was expanding the monitoring of Catalan accounts as of November 2015. The control became exhaustive since July 2017. "Was this control impregnable? Did it admit to being mocked?", asked the prosecutor Consuelo Madrigal. The witness has not ruled out this possibility. "It is a certification system of the intervention itself, but it is not the material reality of the facts," he admitted.

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The response of Martinez Rico is in line with what was declared at the time by his boss, former Minister of Finance Cristóbal Montoro, who also gave an account of the tight controls but suggested that the Government could avoid them, which would leave open the door to a possible crime of embezzlement. Martinez Rico has affirmed as answers to questions of the Office of the Prosecutor that the controls of the ministry "arrive up to where they arrive and they have the limits that they have", reason why they cannot detect an irregular contracting. "An irregular contract is irregular in any case, with a certificate and without it, and would be outside of this control", he acknowledged.

After Martinez Rico, two Civil Guard agents have been summoned by the Prosecutor's Office. The first was present in the search of the house and the office of the person who was secretary of the Treasury of the Generalitat Josep Lluís Salvadó. He explained that the search could be done "with complete normality" even though some dozens of people had gathered in front of the headquarters of the Department.

Between the documents found in the house and the office of Salvadó, which is charged in the Court of Instruction 13 of Barcelona, ​​the agent has highlighted some broken pages found in a wastebasket. After reconstructing them it could be read: "Scenarios after the referendum", where four phases were foreseen: the electoral night, the recount and formal proclamation, legal transition and transitional constituent process. Another document with two titles was also found: War scenario and Guerrilla scenario. According to the agent, it was about the legal and financial measures that the State could take against the independence challenge and the means of subsistence that Catalonia could adopt.

The second agent who has testified was present, among others, in the search and detention of Josep Maria Jové, number two of  Oriol Junqueras in the Ministry of Economy. The agent has declared that they were able to search the house, but that they could not take the detainee to his office of Economy due to the concentration that was before the headquarters. "They told me that there was such a concentration of people that at the moment it was impossible to access", said the civil guard, who added that his boss told him by telephone that Jordi Sànchez, then president of the Catalan National Assembly, told him that he was not going to allow the entry of vehicles of the Civil Guard to the seat of Economy.

This agent has also explained his participation in some of the investigations to find out if the Generalitat used public money in the organization of the referendum. In particular, in the headquarters of Unipost, Diplocat and other signage companies. And the witness has revealed some details that help the Prosecutor's accusation related to the embezzlement. According to the agent, there is documentation proving payment in almost all cases, but it is in different stages of the process. In the case of Unipost, there are documented payment commitments, while in the Civisme campaign (to promote participation in the referendum) invoices were issued, although they were not paid. Regarding the expenses of international observers, he has maintained that they were paid in the end.

The witness has focused especially on the case of the search in the Unipost headquarters in L'Hospitalet. He told that in the office of the CEO of the company, Pablo Reventós, was found a handwritten note entitled "Summary of the campaign of the Generalitat" which dealt with the sending of 56,000 letters addressed to the members of the polling stations from 1-O. In this note reference was made to five departments of the Generalitat among which the commission was distributed, among them, the Presidency (Turull), the Vice Presidency (Junqueras) and the Labor (Bassa). In addition, agents found invoices "proforma" and delivery notes with the stamps of these five departments on the order made to Unipost.

During the interrogation of the agents, the defenses have tried to cast doubt on the formal procedures that were followed in the searches. For example, in the case of the operation at the Economy headquarters, Junqueras' attorney has considered that the Civil Guard searched in more dependencies than those indicated in the judicial order. The witness has admitted that, in addition to Salvadó's office, "the tables of his secretaries" and "the photocopier's room" were searched. The defenses have also focused in the procedures (in their opinion irregular) that were followed to read the rights of the detainees and whether they were assisted by their lawyers during the searches (Salvadó, not, and Jové, yes, according to the agents).

"Total terror"

The third agent who has appeared has told how the searching was developed at the headquarters of the Department of Foreign Affairs. The witness has referred to two situations included in the indictment of the prosecution: the "hostile attitude" of the 200 people concentrated in the door forced to remove in a camouflaged car the court secretary "between insults and throwing of objects" and it generated moments of "violence" when Xavier Puig Farré, a high-rank official in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was being removed as a detainee from the building.

The Civil Guard has described this situation as "a chapter of total terror". He has assured that there were insults, death threats, throwing bottles and shaking and beating police vehicles, one of which was left with broken glass. "There was a very aggressive atmosphere and I feared an assault on the building," he assured. He also affirmed that the demonstrators "tried to take away" the detainee from the security team which was leading him from the building to the police car. "They grabbed him by the neck and by the clothes", he said. Given this situation, he added, the agents of the Mossos d'Esquadra who were displaced outside the building, only "looked".

The agent has also assured that, at a certain moment, the then president of the Parliament, Carme Forcadell, passed by in front of the building, inside a van. "Forcadell put out her hand to stir the mass of people from the official car", he said. During the question time of the defenses, the lawyer of Forcadell has denied that this happened that day, has warned that the agent had not cited this fact in previous statements and has asked, without success, to act for false testimony against the witness. Other lawyers in the defense have tried to discredit the agent's story. Javier Melero, Joaquim Forn's lawyer, asked if the Civil Guard "used force" in the situation of violence described by the witness. The guard has admitted that it was not done and that no one was injured, except for "some bruise".

The last of the witnesses of the day, a command that participated in the police presence of 1-O, has said that the agents did not know first-hand the instruction of the Secretary of State for Security, José Antonio Nieto, who explained how the police forces should be coordinated and urged "to ensure the maintenance of civic coexistence."

The agent has described that in some schools large concentrations of citizens were found. "We were insulted, rebuked and beaten, passive resistance became active, and the aim was to hinder or prevent the injunction". "We could not intervene in some centers because when we arrived people blocked compliance with the court order, they prevented access and seizing the material, and the hostility throughout the day was increasing", he said.

 https://elpais.com/politica/2019/03/19/actualidad/1553003201_254002.html