The former president of the Fundació Orfeó Català-Palau de la Música Catalana Félix Millet has died this Thursday at the age of 87 due to his delicate state of health in the residence where he was still serving a sentence of nine years and eight months in prison for looting of the institution he directed.
The life and adventures of Fèlix Millet would make for a television series. Distinguished member of the Catalan bourgeoisie, president of the Fundació Orfeó Català and the Palau de la Música for 19 years -from 1990 until his dismissal in 2009-, his story would be, in synopsis, that of a man whose boundless greed and the lack of scruples caused his downfall.
Millet has died in the residence where he has spent the last weeks of his life, with medical assistance. Away from the red carpets that had been laid out for years in her path. Also far from his cell in Brians2, where he entered in the summer of 2020, until in November he obtained the third degree of prison for incurable illness, after completing a quarter of his prison sentence.
He was sentenced to nine years and eight months in 2018 by the Barcelona Court for crimes of embezzlement, misappropriation, influence peddling, falsification of a commercial document and money laundering for the looting of the Palau de la Música, together with his right-hand man, Jordi Montull . The other sentence, that of the last name, that of the withdrawn greetings, that of the emptiness that the society that had previously idolized him made him, began to serve it on July 23, 2009, when he had to leave the Palau de la Música, for the back door, to avoid the television cameras.
The Mossos d'Esquadra entered the Palau de la Música that morning. It would be correct to say that they broke in: Bach was playing on the Walcker organ and there was a guided tour of the modernist building on Via Laietana in Barcelona. The judge had authorized the police search as a result of a complaint by the prosecution, for an alleged diversion of funds that at that time was estimated at 2.2 million euros.
The investigation began when the Tax Agency detected the circulation of numerous 500-euro bills from the Fundació Orfeó Català, a non-profit cultural entity. During the meticulous search, from which the agents took several boxes, they discovered documents in Millet's safe that made reference to a safe deposit box in a bank: there he kept 1.8 million euros in 500 bills, a part of the loot in cash.
The Court of Barcelona, in the judgment of the Palau Case, set the looting of the musical entity at 23 million euros, for which it condemned Fèlix Millet, Jordi Montull, and his daughter, Gemma Montull, as the main culprits. He imposed prison sentences on them and the obligation to return the money to the musical entity and pay the fines set. Until now, only 12 of the 23 million euros have been recovered thanks to the assets seized from the defendants.
The sentence also considered it proven that Millet and the Montulls organized a system by which Ferrovial-Agroman sent commissions to Convergència (CDC) through the Palau, for the achievement of public works; contests that were promoted by regional or local entities whose governments were in the hands of members of the political formation. Thus, the economic structure of the Palau was put at the service of this purpose. The commission was 4% on the contract awarded. 2.5% was for the party, and the remaining 1.5% for Millet and Montull, who in turn shared it out following the percentage of 80% for the first and 20% for the second.
Currently, Millet also had two other open cases for hiding income from rentals from the courts and for the disappearance of various valuables from his home, presumably to avoid compensation.
Fèlix Millet was born on December 8, 1935. The fourth of five children, in a bourgeois family that had made a fortune in the textile sector, his was also one of the most influential sagas of Catalan cultural life. His great-uncle Lluís Millet was co-founder of the Orfeó Català, so business went hand in hand with cultural concerns, as his sister Pat Millet summed up years later in her memoirs: "My origins are the cash register and the high culture".
During his school days, Millet studied at the Jesuits of Sarrià and at the Virtèlia school, and later trained as an agronomist, but from a young age he dedicated himself to business. He spent ten years working in Africa, in a family business that operated coffee and cocoa plantations in the former Spanish colony of Fernando Poo. When his father died in 1963, he returned to Barcelona and joined the Orfeó Català, initially as vice-president, and since 1978 as president. His last name was the best business card, but his qualities as a manager and, in particular, his ability to get donations, gave him an image of a getter that opened many doors for him. Millet was the great seducer.
In 1983 -long before the Palau case broke out-, he had a first setback and spent two months in prison, along with three other partners, accused of fraud in the management of the Sociedad de Inversiones Inmobiliarias Renta Catalana, although the trial condemned him just because of an administrative imprudence. That matter was forgotten.
He accumulated positions in the Fundació del Barça, la Caixa, the Liceu, the Fundació Pau Casals and the Fundació Agrupació Mútua, among others. Social recognition was in parallel. Among the titles and distinctions he received, the Clau de Barcelona, in 1998, and a year later, the Creu de Sant Jordi de la Generalitat stand out. And he was about to also receive the Barcelona Gold Medal for Cultural Merit. The day that the Mossos entered the Palau de la Música for registration, irony as fate would have it, Barcelona City Council was going to unanimously approve the awarding of the award to someone who was considered a patron and cultural promoter, a vote that logically remained postponed sine die.
That day, the images of the Mossos d'Esquadra leaving the Palau de la Música with boxes fell like a jug of cold water on Catalan public opinion. The news that Fèlix Millet had diverted funds from the entity to his benefit was received with astonishment, no one gave credit. No one had suspected anything unusual in his high standard of living, and despite the fact that in 2002 an anonymous person alerted by means of a complaint to the Treasury of the "high degree of corruption" in the institution, as well as double accounting and the "large amounts" that Millet and his collaborators diverted "for their own benefit", and despite the fact that a report from the Sindicatura de Comptes had detected anomalies in their management at the Palau de la Música, for years no one put the magnifying glass there. No one wanted to lift the rugs. Instead, a red carpet was laid out for Millet wherever he passed.
With that feeling of impunity, for years he handled the money that came to the musical entity as if it were his own, for personal expenses and for his family and that of Montull, as was proven during the judicial investigation. He paid for numerous trips and vacations, works on his house, made expensive purchases and cashed checks from the entity's accounts over the counter at banks, cash that he had available for his expenses. The money left the Palau in envelopes to pay for any whim of the family. Black payments were the routine. During the investigation, some episodes that came to light reveal the character's moral character, among them, and perhaps the best known, the weddings of his daughters, which Millet celebrated at the Palau de la Música, and invited politicians and businessmen, along with the cream of Catalan society, all paid for by the Fundació Orfeó Català, according to the invoices submitted to the judicial process opened for the diversion of millions of euros from the entity. Millet passed the bill of more than 80,000 euros for the wedding of his daughter Clara from him to the Orfeó, but charged half to the groom's parents. Invoices related to the wedding of his daughter Laila for more than 129,000 euros were also found, which he also charged to the foundation.
Two months after the scandal broke out, on the advice of his lawyer, Millet sent a letter in which he blamed himself to the judge who was investigating his management at the Palau. He confessed to having diverted at least 3.3 million euros for his own benefit and that of his partner Jordi Montull. He apologized and expressed his desire to collaborate with justice, for which he contributed 1.8 million to the court, and a list of his assets, valued at more than 12 million, to ensure the full compensation of the institution's assets. The strategy allowed them to buy time and avoid jail.
In La vida amarga de les flors (Angle Editorial), Pat Millet, who died in 2019, explained how the Palau scandal was a schism for the family and ensured that no one of the Millets knew anything about what had been carried out for years by their brother Felix. He also detailed how he, after uncovering what was one of the most notorious corruption cases of the last decade, and experiencing firsthand the fate of those fallen from grace, spent his days -before going to prison- with nothing more to do. to smoke cigarettes and repeat that he wanted to die.
Pat Millet's memoirs offer many details to trace the portrait of Fèlix Millet, that boy who grew up among modernist halls lined with mirrors, and who believed himself to be more important than he was. “He was very fond of me but did not want me to interfere with his high-flying social life. When I was little, when I was already in bed and my brothers had dinner, Fèlix always entertained himself in the bathtub until someone from the service had to go look for him: 'Señorito, the rest are already at the table'”, explained the little girl. of the Millets in the book. She also detailed how "Fèlix's criminal action disintegrated the family" and the brothers stopped seeing each other twice a year as they had customarily since the death of her mother, who had asked them to love each other. "After the police search, those meetings at the Palau ceased to exist and the only meeting was the one we did at home for the matter of life, where there was anything but esteem," said Pat Millet.
