Judge Joaquin Aguirre interrogates businessman Alexander Dmitrenko on Tuesday as under investigation, whom a report from the Civil Guard places as a link to former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont in Russia, and as a witness to former Minister Elsa Artadi, who before the DUI attended a meeting with supposed emissaries of the Kremlin, within the cause that investigates the alleged Russian plot that could have developed during the procés in Catalonia.
Artadi's summons was issued as a result of the revelations made by the former Secretary of International Relations of Convergència Víctor Terradellas, who testified as being investigated in another case on the alleged diversion of funds from the Barcelona Provincial Council to foundations related to the convergents.
In his statement before the judge, Terradellas explained that Artadi was present at one of the two meetings that the president of the Generalitat at the time, Carles Puigdemont, held with Russian envoys, including Nicolay Sadovnikov, a former diplomat, and former general Sergey Riot.
The meeting in which the leader of Junts was supposedly present took place in October 2017, a few days before the declaration of independence. According to the statement made by Terradellas, the contacts with those Russian emissaries were made at his request because he "was on his own" and without Puigdemont ordering or commissioning it, with the aim that the conversation would serve to explain the situation in Catalonia, just as he had done with envoys from other countries. During the meeting, he specified, Carles Puigdemont was "stunned" and said that the Russians' offer to send 10,000 soldiers once independence had been declared and to finance the future Catalan state through cryptocurrencies seemed to him "a joke in bad taste".
The same judge has summoned to declare Dmitrenko as investigated to find out if a sale of gas or oil between Russia and China in which he participated could serve to finance the procés.
On Alay's phone, which was tapped after his arrest in Operation Volhov in October 2020, some conversations appeared that allegedly revealed Dimitrenko's participation in the sale of liquefied gas between a Russian and a Chinese company for which he would have bagged 295,000 euros.
The Prosecutor's Office, however, refused to investigate the transaction and submitted a letter to the Barcelona Court alleging that it did not see evidence of a crime. However, the Court agreed with the judge, which has led to Dimitrenko's indictment. Section 21 considered the sale of gas or oil to be "suspicious" because it "possibly constitutes an illegal financing screen and the destination of the money obtained from said sale must be known and whether it arrived in Spain."
