Juan José Fernández
Madrid - Friday, 03/08/2019 | Updated on 03/09/2019 at 11:48 CET
Two fragments from the project of Constitution for a Catalan republic as drafted by the former judge Santiago Vidal. / EL PERIODICO
The Government of Carles Puigdemont planned for the first moments of an independent Catalonia to capture 4.200 million euros in social contributions from companies, to spend 499 million euros to activate their own treasury and to confiscate real estate from the Spanish State for 19,134 million euros.
These figures are derived from the set of reports and other contributions of the Civil Guard to the investigation of the Court of Preliminary Investigation 13 of Barcelona for crimes connected with the preparation of independence. Among the elements of evidence presented, a draft of a Catalan constitution that foresees important limitations of political rights for parties and officials who do not support the pro-independence movement.
For example, and to diminish legitimacy from possible appeals or protests from within, the Catalan constitution project found among Vidal’s documents foresaw the limitation of rights to those implicitly considered as internal enemies: "Catalan citizenship will not be obtained, nor kept, by those people who, not being Catalans of origin, have been military professionals and/or forces of public military or civil order of the Kingdom of Spain and/or have been part of a foreign government".
In addition, the basic rule of the new republic would impose, according to the documents found, to all civil servants the obligation to choose a single nationality, and would give them six months to decide either to practice in Catalonia as Catalan citizens or not being Catalan citizen, in which case they will not be allowed to practice.
In the republic foreseen by the pro-independence movement, not all ideas could be defended. In Santi Vidal's sketch there is an article that foresees to allow "the existence of all kinds of political participation as long as its electoral program does not go against the existence of Catalonia as a State or against this Constitution". In terms of internal security, the plans proposed the creation in the police of this republic of a "unit specializing against violent pro-Spain groups" which could exercise "police pressure" on the most heated disaffected.
The lawyer of the court that intervened in the search, as well as the guards who carried it out and who analyzed the documentation, were struck by the shocking detail that, for the notes of the Catalan constitution, Vidal used hundreds of pages of the Administration of Justice of Spain, official paper, with the shield of the State, coming from the court in which he exercised.
Social security, key
The investigations have revealed the participation of important consulting, technology and information firms to prepare the data management bases necessary to create a Catalan social security. So far no payments have been discovered to these companies, including Deloitte, IT-Sistems and IBM, only budgets from technicians of the Generalitat.
With the Center for Telecommunications and Information Technology (CTTI) as a pivot, under the political direction of the minister for Labor Dolors Bassa and its Secretary General Josep Ginesta, and with experts from the center experts in computer networks, the Government designed a system of raising social resources for the beginnings of a Catalonia separated from Spain.
The plans, intervened by the Civil Guard in their searches held on September 20, 2017 - Operation Anubis - by order of Court 13, include technological preparations that were already well advanced before the Parliament enacted the laws of disconnection that later suspended the Constitutional Court.
Annotations in the papers intervened by the Civil Guard to the technician of the Departament de Treball David Franco on September 20, 2017. On the left, a diagram of the collection system for a social security in independent Catalonia. On the right, the figures of affiliates and retirees that the Govern Puigdemont forecast. / EL PERIODICO
For the Civil Guard, it was "key in the disconnection to assume the social security system", it says in a report. The plans pointed to the need to have accession -or compliance- of at least from 100 leading companies in Catalonia. With the contributions to the Social Security of those companies, plus those of 233 entities of the public sector controlled by the Generalitat, the designers of the plan foresaw to gather a critical mass of income of 4,200 million euros.
But that was in the first phase. The objective in terms of Social Security was to collect and manage the contributions of 3.2 million taxpayers and control 690,000 companies, including the self-employed, and the pensions of one million retirees.
Among the documents seized by the Civil Guard at the headquarters of the Department of Labor in the tense day of September 20, there are notes from the technician David Palanques foreseeing that the Generalitat stands as "the authority requesting in Catalonia all taxes and all the fees and obligations of any type for the social security system and passive classes".
The agency that would administer them would be a Catalan Agency for Social Protection. For the technical design of that agency, the Generalitat requested sketches from the Deloitte firm, according to notes intervened with the work technician David Franco. Its participation was budgeted at 197,508 euros, although the notes also foresee a "no VAT" price: 163,230. In those notes there are also allusions to participation in these tasks of HP, IBM, Itteria and the Cesicat.
They were needed to implement a Data Processing Center (CPD) that was going to have a budget of 1,471,247 euros in 2017 and 2,537,561 in 2018. The CPD would have to be able to manage the data of the mentioned 3.2 million taxpayers and 300,000 affiliations per year.
Catalan Finance Department
Beyond the famous Moleskine of Josep Lluís Salvadó, Secretary of the Department of Economy and Finance, the Civil Guard has also analyzed a pen drive of Salvadó with a single document, "Activitats i mesures adreçades a la creació de l'Estat Catalá", which contains a quantification of the resources necessary for the deployment of the treasury of an independent Catalonia on the same day 1 of the breakup.
According to the calculations that Salvadó made, that would mean spending 499,860,737 euros, and increase the staff of the Catalan Tax Agency in 7,000 people. All this, clarifies the Civil Guard, without counting on "the amount necessary for the deployment of the customs or the real estate agency", which would be the Catalan land registry.
And all this calculated as an extension only budget, without counting the resources already employed, in the autonomic phase, in creating an independent tax system: "It is inferred that around 17 million euros have been invested in the deployment of the tax administration as a step intermediate to reach the full fiscal sovereignty of the future Catalan state", the investigators assure to Judge Alejandra Gil, the one to take care of the preliminary investigations initiated by the late Judge Juan Antonio Ramírez Sunyer.
Confiscation of State property
The appropriation of other resources by a Catalan government already separated from Spain would have legal coverage at the highest normative level of the new Catalan republic.
Among the papers seized from former judge Santiago Vidal at his home that September 20, there was an imitation of a Catalan constitution. The last article is a "decree of confiscation", with such a title, which runs like this: "The assets existing on the day of the declaration of independence, within the current territory of Catalonia, belonging to the Kingdom of Spain, pass over to the property of the Catalan Republic".
The Secretary of Finance Salvadó had a team of 10 people, investigated by the Security Forces, working on an inventory of real state property and its value. The figure that came out was 19,134 million euros. The confiscation of State assets by a disconnected Generalitat had been the subject of open debates at the Catalan National Assembly, when in conferences or colloquiums were raised the first steps of a Catalonia separated from Spain.
https://www.elperiodico.com/es/politica/20190308/planes-govern-puigdemont-independencia-cataluna-7343958
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