The agreement reached between the defendant Isaías Herrero and the Prosecutor’s Office has focused the first session of the trial against the suspended president of Parliament Laura Borràs, generating moments of high tension between the defense lawyers themselves. The lawyer for the leader of Junts, Isabel Elbal, has harshly charged against the lawyers of the other two defendants, accusing them of having sealed an agreement with the Prosecutor’s Office that makes them “accusers” instead of “defenders”, which, to his trial, could violate his client’s right to defense, because it would have allowed the public prosecutor to access documents from the three defenses. Thus, she has asked the room to allow her to intervene last.
In this regard, the Prosecutor’s Office, which requests six years in prison and 21 years of disqualification from Borràs for allegedly awarding 18 freelance contracts to Herrero between 2013 and 2017 when he presided over the Institució de les Lletres Catalanes (ILC) for a value of 335,700 euros, He wanted to clarify that “he has not formalized” an agreement with the other defendants, something that could happen before the end of the trial.
During the processing of the previous questions, Elbal – who is defending Borràs together with Gonzalo Boye – has denounced that the alleged pact leaves them defenseless and has asked to suspend the trial to have time to prepare for the new open scenario. Borràs’ lawyers have even gone further and consider that this maneuver may constitute an irregularity in the code of ethics of the legal profession and have requested a waiver, -several days of pause- to collect evidence and deliver it to the Bar Association in against his fellow defensemen.
These constant references have angered Herrero’s lawyer, Marina Roig, who has asked the court to intervene to stop using the term accusers to refer to the defenses. “What is being done is questioning the exercise of the right of defense,” she lamented.
Borràs’s lawyer has continued to reproach the other lawyers who for three years have maintained “the same line of defense” until 72 hours before the start of the trial they realize that the other defendants “have reached an agreement”. And she has recalled that they even shared expenses to pay for an expert test. “An expert witness has been hired by Herrero’s defense to defend us against the accusation of embezzlement. It was hired and paid in three equal parts.” For this reason, Elbal has announced that she is going to request a waiver from the Barcelona Bar Association so that they are allowed to lift professional secrecy and expose the evidence and documents that prove this joint strategy with the other defenses.
In this line, the lawyer Gonzalo Boye presented a letter yesterday hours before the start of the trial in which it was stated that the accusations that will presumably be leveled against Borràs by the other defendants have been “evidently compensated, subsidized or paid ”. The lawyer for the third defendant, Andreu Pujol, accused of preparing invoices to mask the alleged arbitrary adjudication, has described these comments as “unnecessary and unfortunate” and has called for “respect for the right to defense.”
Given the continuous references to the pact by Borràs’ lawyers, the Prosecutor’s Office has clarified that “an agreement has not been formalized” with the other defendants. The public ministry could have confirmed today the existence of an agreement with the defendants. For this, he should have announced that he was lowering the penalty request after reaching an agreement. However, he has not done so, which means that the agreement will be formalized if, when it is his turn to testify, Herrero confesses to the irregularities that he allegedly committed with Borràs.
