The PDECat, the successor party to the defunct CDC, has asked the National Court to withdraw from the so-called 3% case, the investigation into the alleged irregular financing of Convergència through public works tenders, as the party has become extinct.
The formation, which was born in 2016 as a result of the dissolution of the Convergència founded by Jordi Pujol, states in a document that a Barcelona Commercial Court declared the "extinction of the bankrupt legal entity", which is why He asks the National Court to file the case.
A case that has been in the Court since 2018 and that is still pending a trial date, more than a year after the judge, in November 2022, agreed to open an oral trial for the PDECat and CDC and their former treasurers Germà Gordó, Daniel Osácar and Andreu Viloca, among others.
The PDECat, which put an end to its political career after a congress held in October last year, understands that the resolution last December in which a judge agreed to the conclusion of the bankruptcy proceedings implies the extinction of its eventual criminal liability and civil.
An argument with which the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office disagrees, which has already sent its report to the court, in which it maintains that, regardless of the fact that the competition has been declared "without mass", "it must be in criminal proceedings in which it is determined , firstly, if there is responsibility of CDC and, secondly, if there are assets in the name of PDECat that must respond in relation to said responsibility."
"One thing is the extinction of the political party and another is the attribution of its assets to the result, if any, conviction," indicates the Anti-Corruption report.
In this case, the Prosecutor's Office requests 3 million euros as a fine for PDECat and CDC for a crime of money laundering, and for the former CDC managers Andreu Viloca and Germà Gordó it requests the highest prison sentences, 21 years and 4 months. and 18 years and 10 months, respectively, while for Osácar he demands a year and a half in prison, replaceable by work to benefit the community.
In total, a total of thirty people must be tried, including politicians, businessmen and officials from different administrations and public institutions in Catalonia, and sixteen legal entities.
It will be judged whether, as the Prosecutor's Office maintains, between 2008 and 2015 "senior officials" of the CDC, "in collusion" with public officials, officials from different Catalan administrations and businessmen, "put in place a structure to finance this political party illegally and covertly."
The prosecutor believes that businessmen agreed with CDC officials to make covert payments to the party, under the guise of donations through related foundations, which were sometimes "linked" to "compensation for the award" of contracts and other times were made to "create or maintain a good relationship with CDC" and, thus, be taken into account for future contests, that is, to maintain a "privileged" relationship with the party and "consecrate their belonging to the family."
