Neither the one who was director of the police in 2018, nor the secretary general of the Ministry of the Interior, nor the chief of staff and current director of the Mossos – all from Junts – were aware that Sergeant Lluís Escolà, who was filed by help Puigdemont flee, he was traveling to Brussels to provide security for the former president. The members of the previous leadership of the Interior have declared this Thursday in the second session of the trial against the ex-minister Miquel Buch and the sergeant of the Mossos, accused of masking his signing as an adviser so that he could ensure the safety of the former president in Belgium after that the Ministry would have denied him the escort once he lost the status of authority having been prosecuted by the Supreme Court.
The former leaders of the Ministry of the Interior have responded evasively to the prosecutor’s questioning about whether they knew that Escolà, despite the fact that he was paid as an adviser, never went to work and instead accompanied the former president abroad. The prosecution is trying to prove that it was a covert transfer, as the Mossos confirmed yesterday before the court. The clearest has been the former number two of the Ministry of the Interior, Brauli Duart. He has assured that he did not have direct knowledge of that circumstance but that the trips that Escolà made were “in a personal capacity”. “We did not have direct knowledge because he did not ask for travel expenses or anything. If he had asked for them we would have told him no ”.
He has also clarified that “no body warned him that this was incompatible” implying that the fact of being with the former president did not mean that he was doing security work. “Throughout these five years, no body has ever expedited possible mossos who were there (with Puigdemont) because if it were true, they would be in breach of the incompatibility regime provided for in the Generalitat’s police law.” The defendants’ defenses try to show that Escolà acted as an adviser and that is why he was paid as such and that the trips with Puigdemont were in the private sphere without acting as a police officer. Duart has affirmed that the signing of Escolà as adviser “was perfect for the profile that the minister was looking for” and Pere Ferrer, current director of the Mossos and formerly head of the cabinet, has assured that it was not necessary for the adviser to go to the ministry to work because what prevailed was absolute availability “I do not link the advisory work to face-to-face but to availability”.
For his part, Andreu Joan Martínez, former director general of the Mossos, has thrown balls out on any question that could compromise the minister. He did not know that Puigdemont’s bodyguard traveled continuously to Brussels, nor did he know that there were mossos doing security work for the former president and he did not even know that Escolà had been signed up as an adviser by Minister Buch. He did not know anything either by the press or by the networks. He only remembered that he had signed a sanction file for a serious offense against Escolà for having helped Puigdemont flee behind the back of his superiors. “The sanction was more serious than the one they proposed to me,” refuting that the sanction was lenient, as the former head of the Mossos investigation stated in yesterday’s session. Martínez has also recalled that he sent a letter to the Ministry of the Interior requesting an escort for Puigdemont without notifying the minister. “It was an ordinary procedure,” he assured in the face of the prosecutor’s disbelief.
