The Pujol family lost the last cartridge they had a year ago so as not to go to trial for corruption, but they have another one of greater caliber for when the trial starts. The Criminal Chamber of the National Court dismissed in April 2021 the appeal with which they wanted to avoid the bench, and concluded that the couple and their seven children functioned as an illicit association and committed crimes of money laundering, against public finances and documentary forgery.
When the trial begins, a question will arise: is the entire case contaminated from the beginning by an irregular action, arising from information obtained by the Spanish police allegedly under duress from the leadership of a bank, thus violating the mandatory banking secrecy? Are the witnesses used as leverage to open the initial investigation, Victoria Álvarez and the unreliable Javier de la Rosa, who received money for their words, reliable? On the other hand... how will it affect the performance of the so-called 'patriotic police', with the recordings of Commissioner Villarejo appearing day after day?
Patriarch Pujol faces a request for a 9-year sentence for this great case. His son Jordi Pujol Ferrusola, the oldest of all: 29. He already spent 246 days behind bars for it in 2017, and also appears in the summary of 3% of alleged irregular CDC financing.
Two other brothers were splashed: Oriol served 36 days in jail, at the beginning of 2019, after being sentenced – with his consent – for the case of influence peddling in ITV station concessions. And Oleguer is still pending the Drago case, in which the seven initial defendants have been reduced to one: him.
Sooner or later, the great Pujol case will come to trial, but in a few days it stops being news. In recent weeks, various media have published information that supports the idea that a large state operation was launched when, in 2012 or 2013, the secessionist movement began to gain muscle, and some high government levels began to worry about what that was coming and to act to blow it up. As it was.
The second phase of the Pujol case, the most mediatic, explodes with information that, on July 7, 2014, is published by El Mundo. It is "the screenshot" of a supposed bank summary in which income (from 2010 and 2011) of six of the family members appears in the Banca Privada d'Andorra (BPA), a key institution in this entire plot. 3.4 million euros transferred there in a month from another entity, Andbank.
Barely nine days later, a huge earthquake shakes Catalonia: Jordi Pujol i Soley, the molt honorable president, confesses that for 34 years he kept a large amount of money in Andorra. He says that his father left it to him as an inheritance and that he never found the time to regularize it. The damage is tremendous, and the lawsuit against the Pujols by the Clean Hands union is immediate.
The investigating judge of the National High Court José de la Mata does not believe that version of the inheritance, but maintains that it is the fruit of years of bribery by the entire clan in public concessions.
But let's go back to the screenshot: who gave the data that ended up on the cover of El Mundo? In recent months, numerous details have emerged of what happened to BPA in those months, before and after. The directors of the entity, investigated for having alleged criminals from various countries among its clients, were ordered by Spanish police officers to provide them with bank details of Artur Mas, Oriol Junqueras and Jordi Pujol.
On June 2, 2014, shortly before the “screenshot”, the CEO of BPA, Joan Pau Miquel, recorded a conversation with Celestino Barroso, Interior Attaché of the Spanish embassy in Andorra, in which he suggested that if provide certain data (which is not specified) the bank will receive an "hachazo".
Those referring to the Pujols ended up in El Mundo, but even so, in March 2015, the United States (according to the BPA, alerted by the Spanish Ministry of the Interior in revenge for its lack of collaboration) activated a mechanism to combat the financing of terrorism that would mean the closure of BPA and its subsidiary, Banco Madrid.
The Pujols, in any case, immediately sue BPA for revealing banking secrecy. A major crime in Andorra, which can carry high prison sentences, and which legally is an ace in the Pujol's sleeve; they would like the Andorran justice to be faster than the Spanish in the Pujol case. They have also joined the lawsuit that BPA files against high-ranking police officers for coercion.
We can go even further back, because conversations recorded by Villarejo at the end of 2012 –and now revealed by El País and elmon.cat– suggest a long-term operation.
In one of them, Villarejo tells that the businessman Javier de la Rosa assures that Pujol has accounts in the Swiss bank Lombard. This data will end up published in a certain Spanish press in January 2013, and will immediately be denied by the bank itself.
In another dialogue, Villarejo speaks with the then Minister of the Interior, Jorge Fernández Díaz, who asks if the information on corruption of Artur Mas and Jordi Pujol is likely to be prosecuted. Villarejo says yes, and the minister blurts out: “You have spoken with the State prosecutor, huh?”
Because the investigations not only start from the “screenshot”. On the exact same day –July 7– 2010, the then leader of the Catalan PP, Alicia Sánchez-Camacho, and Victoria Álvarez, former partner of Jordi Pujol Ferrusola, ate at the La Camarga restaurant in Barcelona. Unbeknownst to her, the dialogue is recorded. Álvarez reveals that her boyfriend brings suitcases full of bills to Andorra. When the conversation transcends, the Pujols receive requirements from the National Fraud Inspection Office. The case of La Camarga generated an intense exchange of complaints between those involved, and in 2018 it had an epilogue that is already in the hands of the Pujols: beyond whether it was true that Jordi Pujol Ferrusola raised money by the bucketload to Andorra, Álvarez He acknowledged to El Independiente that between 2011 and 2016 he received from the reserved funds of the State. The concept: “Research expenses”.
