The review of the Supreme Court of the sentence of the procés that ruled out applying the attenuated embezzlement to the pro-independence leaders buries the options that the twenty former high officials of the Government investigated in court 13 of Barcelona for the organization of the referendum obtain lighter sentences. This is assumed by sources close to those involved, who regret that the will of the legislator has not been fulfilled and the agreement reached between the Government and ERC to reduce the penalties for embezzlement in cases in which there was no profit motive, as was the case on 1 -O, it has come to nothing.
In 2017, the case from which everything else has derived began in court 13 in Barcelona: the case of the procés that condemned the pro-independence leaders, the process against the Mossos and the Interior leadership, who ended up acquitted, and the investigation against the architects of 1-O –Josep Maria Jové and Lluís Salvadó–, which is pending trial in the TSJC.
In Court 13, for more than five years, forty former senior government officials have been waiting to be tried, most of them general secretaries of the ministries that participated in the preparations to celebrate 1-O and businessmen who provided logistical support. This week it has been learned that to this cause that is being investigated at a desperately slow fire, those related to the foreign expenses of the process that were being investigated in court 18 will be added as facts to judge, with which the case is still going to be stretch further in time. Among those investigated, there are twenty who are accused of embezzlement, the most serious crime, and who harbored some hope that the reform of the Penal Code agreed by the Government and ERC could mean a reduction in their sentences.
However, given the latest precedents, there is nothing to suggest that this will be the case. The review of the sentence of the Supreme Court marks the path of future trials and who knows if its outcome. One of the lawyers in the case indicates that the resolution of the High Court "establishes a criterion that will be extrapolated to the rest of the procedures" and denounces that "the Supreme does not want to give any validity to the reform of the Penal Code." Another lawyer points out that "the interpretation must always be favorable to the prisoner, but in this case it will not be like that."
Despite the fact that the modifications introduced to reduce the punishment for embezzlement differentiated whether or not there is a profit motive, the Supreme Court argued that "it would be contrary to the most elementary legal logic to understand that whoever makes public funds their own incurs a penalty that It can reach eight years in prison and whoever uses it for criminal or unlawful activity – in our case, holding a judicially prohibited referendum – can be punished with a fine.” Under this premise, he decided to apply aggravated embezzlement to Junqueras, Bassa, Romeva and Turull.
Based on this interpretation of the Supreme Court, the TSJC prosecutor decided to charge Jové and Salvadó, the ideologues of the referendum device and the structures of the future independent Catalan State, with aggravated embezzlement. The prosecutor's office ruled out applying the attenuated modality and asks them for seven and a half years in jail and six, respectively. Prosecutors follow the criteria of the State Attorney General's Office, which before the entry into force of the new embezzlement reform, approved a decree in which it set the tone, establishing that "the profit motive required by the new crime of embezzlement is It will be appreciated in all cases in which the person in charge acts consciously and willingly to dispose of public assets as if it were his own, using it for purposes unrelated to the public function to achieve an advantage or benefit of his own or that of others of any kind.
With this interpretation, the prosecution leaves little room to apply the new attenuated modality. "They are preventing the attenuated rate created by the legislator from being applied," laments another lawyer. Given this guideline, a defense lawyer assumes that the prosecution will charge those investigated in court 13 for aggravated embezzlement. The only exception may be the number of years that she requests. "If Jové was the chief who organized the referendum and they ask him for seven years, perhaps they ask the others for fewer years," she stresses.
The State Attorney's Office, which is also involved in both the Jové and Salvadó case and that of 13, plans to rule in the coming days. In the cause of the process of the Supreme Court, she opted to apply attenuated embezzlement to the leaders of the process, estimating that "they did not steal public funds for their own profit or for a third party."
The cause for the preparations for 1-O faces the final stretch. The investigation has been closed for almost two years, but an appeal was pending on whether the investigation into the action abroad of the process was accumulated, as it has been. The Prosecutor's Office argued that this would prolong a case that was already complex, but the Court argued this week that macro-causes exist and this is not an impediment for everything to be judged only once.
With the accumulation, a paradoxical fact will occur. Former Minister Raül Romeva, who was accused of embezzlement in the case of 18, is being investigated in the case of 13, where the preparations for 1-O are being judged, for which he was already sentenced by the Supreme Court.
