The conviction of Laura Borràs ends a case that has lasted for the last five years and that began due to a fortuitous event: the mistake of a Post Office worker who made a mistake when placing an envelope in a mailbox and ended up uncovering a mailbox. corruption case that reached the leader of Junts. The error was discovered by the sender of that package. She went to the Post Office in the municipality of Castellbell i el Vilar and when she picked up the mail she discovered an envelope that she had not expected. Inside were twenty 50-euro bills. The lady went to the police who confirmed that the money was counterfeit. The envelope was in the name of Isaías Herrero and should have been placed in the mailbox that was right next to the lady who discovered it. Herrero, was a young man with drug problems who began to commit crimes to pay for his additions. But he also turned out to be a friend and employee of Laura Borràs, who at that time was the president of the Institució de les Lletres Catalanes (ILC), an organization dependent on the Ministry of Culture that oversees the promotion of Catalan literature. Herrero was in charge of maintaining the institution’s computer portal, hired by the president. The Mossos investigated the recipient of that false coin, tapped his phone and captured one in which he commented on the trapis he did with Borràs in the ILC. For the issue of drugs and counterfeit currency, Herrero was sentenced to 5 years in prison, although it was commuted to a non-compliance sentence in exchange for him not committing crimes again and undergoing detoxification treatment.
However, as a result of that conversation in which Borràs was implicated, the Mossos opened a new line of investigation that ended up in the examining court 9 of Barcelona whose head is magistrate Silvia López Mejía, who currently instructs, among many others, the Negreira case that splashes Barça. The instruction discovered emails that exposed the fixing. Between 2013 and 2017, Borràs and Herrero agreed to divide 18 contracts and never exceed the threshold of 18,000 euros that would have forced them to call a public tender. The cause followed in the wake of Borràs’s political career. When she was a deputy in Congress, the cause traveled to the Supreme Court; and when she was appointed president of Parliament, the cause was sent to the TSJC.
In 2018, the Mossos carried out an entry and search of the Telecommunications Center of Catalonia to seize the ILC emails and find evidence of the alleged irregularities committed by Borràs and Herrero. The information was published in the media and the judge accused the Mossos of having leaked the operation. In the midst of a time of distrust of justice with the Catalan police after what happened on October 1, the magistrate expelled the Mossos from the investigation of Laura Borràs and placed the case in the hands of the Civil Guard, which, as judicial police, was in charge of to finish the instruction.
The emails found in the CTTI and analyzed first by the Mossos and then by the Civil Guard were the key evidence to support the accusation against Borràs. The prosecution concluded that the leader of Junts not only advised but also gave instructions to her friend on how the fraud should be committed. The president has always maintained that the subdivision was not a crime and that no member of the intervention warned her that it was irregular.
