The Barcelona Court has imposed a harsh sentence on former Interior Minister Miquel Buch for having provided an escort to former president Carles Puigdemont when he was already in Belgium and without being authorized to do so. The sentence imposes on Buch the penalty of four and a half years in prison as the author of the crimes of prevarication and misappropriation of public funds, and a disqualification from holding public office for the next 20 years. The severe sentence comes at a time when Pedro Sánchez’s investiture depends on the votes of Junts, Puigdemont’s party – and also Buch’s – which has been at the forefront of the talks and has demanded an amnesty for all people affected in criminal and civil cases derived from the process.
The court considers it proven that Buch arbitrarily hired Mossos sergeant Lluís Escolà, an agent who helped Puigdemont flee to Belgium after the DUI, as a security advisor with the purpose of providing “remunerative coverage for the function of personal and security protection” of the former president, despite the lack of authorization to do so and with a salary of 52,712 euros. The court also imposes a sentence of four years in prison and 19 years of disqualification for the sergeant. Buch criticized the speed with which the sentence was written and announced that he will appeal: “We will appeal because I am convinced of what we did, and anyone who saw the trial knows that this result is unfair”; and he denounced that “in just one month” a sentence of “more than 80 pages” has already been written. “It seems like there was a rush to convict me,” Buch added.
The sentence, which has effectively been written in a single month because August is a non-working month, justifies the imposition of harsh penalties against Buch for having breached “the duties and obligations of the position he held.” The Prosecutor’s Office requested seven years in prison for Buch, and finally the court imposed the sentence in the upper half of it. The events date back to June 2018 when, after the uprising of 155, Puigdemont requested the prerogatives that corresponded to him as former president, among which were those of an escort service. The Ministry of the Interior, in the hands of Grande-Marlaska, denied it, considering that the requirements were not met given that the former president was being prosecuted for 1-O. The Minister of the Interior conveyed the requests and, given the last refusal, signed Sergeant Lluís Escolà as an advisor.
The sergeant, a person close to the former president, provided him with protection services on his days off, which he combined with holidays and vacations that he accumulated in the Mossos. The sergeant’s presence in Waterloo was no surprise. He himself “flaunted” his work in several tweets included in the sentence. “41 weeks taking charge of the Most Honorable President Carles Puigdemont. As long as it is not legal, it will be done legitimately,” he wrote. During the trial, both Buch and Escolà, as well as several members of the Interior leadership, warned that he could not be considered to act as an escort because he did not have the equipment – ??pistol, defense and bulletproof vest – to do so. The court responds that one can act as an escort without equipment and reproaches the agent that his actions cannot be at the service of a private cause or partisan interests.
