The Barcelona Court has ordered the judge in the Volhov case to justify the proceedings that he has agreed to in the new line of investigation opened to Josep Lluís Alay, head of the office of former President Carles Puigdemont, for the trips he made abroad between the years 2015 and 2018.
In an order, the 21st section of the Barcelona Court partially upholds the appeal filed by the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office against the new battery of proceedings ordered by the head of Barcelona’s Investigating Court number 1 on Alay, to whom reports from the Civil Guard relate with contacts in Russia, within the framework of the procés.
Specifically, the judge asked the Barcelona Provincial Council to detail Alay’s trips abroad between 2015 and 2018, when he held a position in the provincial corporation, and ordered the Civil Guard to investigate the assets of the head of the office of Puigdemont.
The chamber rejects that the investigation is prospective, as the Prosecutor’s Office alleged to request its file, but admits that the judge’s resolution has not revealed “the solid suspicions that justify the relevance and necessity of those proceedings.”
Consequently, it annuls the agreed proceedings and orders the judge to issue a new resolution in which it justifies them, but not based on the “supervening results that could have been obtained” while the Prosecutor’s appeal was being processed.
The new proceedings derive from a report by the Civil Guard that maintains that Jordi Castells, current deputy director general of Local Cooperation of the Generalitat, increased his assets by 300,000 euros when he was director of International Relations of the Barcelona Provincial Council, in the CiU stage. , for payments that could come from supplier entities of the provincial corporation.
The judge reasons in his order that Alay succeeded Castells in his position and that under his mandate several of the files of international cooperation projects that are being investigated for alleged diversion of funds to foundations related to the CDC were finalized, a plot that gave rise to the wiretaps that later led to the Volhov case.
According to the Court, the judge’s resolution “does not specify what files we are talking about nor does it specify the circumstantial elements that justify opening the new line of investigation” against Alay, while the motivation “is concise and brief”.
In that sense, the room recalls that these proceedings are located “in the framework of a criminal proceeding that was opened six years ago for alleged illicit subsidies from the Barcelona Provincial Council to certain independence foundations and associations.”
“Consequently, the resolution required an extra motivation to guarantee the defendant’s right to defense, explain the reasons and connection of this new line of investigation and avoid any hint of nullity,” the order adds.
