The PSOE, United We Can and Esquerra are moving the pieces to fit together as best as possible a reform proposal for the crime of embezzlement that satisfies all parties. Yesterday, the president of the parliamentary group of the purple formation, Jaume Asens, and the Minister of Defense, were the clearest in pointing out that this modification should contemplate a reduction in the penalties for embezzlement that does not imply personal enrichment. Today, the Government has introduced a new derivative: that spending that has not been executed is not condemned.
The spokeswoman for the Catalan Executive, Patrícia Plaja, has been clear this afternoon during the press conference after the meeting of the Consell Executiu: "The reform is so that someone can never again be sentenced for an alleged expenditure of money that is not has executed." It is a situation that occurred, according to the Government, in the Supreme Court, in 2019, with those convicted of embezzlement in the 1-O trial: Oriol Junqueras, Raül Romeva, Dolors Bassa and Jordi Turull. Carles Puigdemont, Toni Comín and Lluís Puig, or thirty former senior officials of the Generalitat in Barcelona's investigating court number 13, are also being prosecuted for this.
Independentistas have always referred to this unexecuted misappropriation as "misappropriation of thought." For example, Junqueras did it in a recent interview in La Vanguardia. The support for this demand is again the international recommendations. The clearest, that of the Council of Europe report prepared by the Latvian Boris Cilevics. In its conclusions, it urges Spain to "guarantee that the criminal provision relating to the embezzlement of public funds is applied in such a way that liability is incurred only when real and quantified losses can be established for the State budget or its assets."
In the trial for the procés, the defenses stated that many of the expenses committed by the Generalitat had not caused damage, because the providers had renounced their payment or, in some cases, had presented "not a true invoice but one of the so-called «proforma invoices»", as stated in the ruling. However, the magistrates of the Supreme Court did not share this opinion, among other reasons because an invoice has a fundamentally tax purpose, basically for the tax purposes of VAT.
All in all, Plaja has stressed that the Government will always fight against corruption, but has stressed that a reform of the Penal Code is necessary to "limit the judicialization of politics in the Spanish State as much as possible". Something in which progress is being made, apparently by the ERC and the Government, when it is proposed to repeal the crime of sedition and the modification of that of aggravated public disorder.
The press conference has also served for the ERC Government to take advantage of its negotiating strategy. “For weeks, while there were those who said that a reform of the crime of sedition made little sense, that it contributed little, that the only thing worth repealing was, the Government has remained cautious and has made little or no statement in this regard. Discretion and reservations are points that always add up”, Plaja affirmed in clear reference to Junts, CUP and the ANC, who have always denied that dialogue can bear fruit for the independentistas.
