The Barcelona Court has sentenced former Interior Minister Miquel Buch to four and a half years in prison and a total of 20 years of disqualification, for a crime of embezzlement and another of prevarication for hiring Mossos d’Esquadra sergeant Lluís Escolà as an advisor. to continue escorting the former president of the Generalitat Carles Puigdemont in Belgium after leaving Spain in October 2017. For Escolà, the court has handed down a sentence of four years in prison and 19 years of disqualification for the same crimes.
The conviction comes just two and a half months after the trial took place – with a non-working month like August – and at a very relevant political moment when the investiture of Pedro Sánchez depends precisely on the votes of Carles Puigdemont’s party, who has placed himself at the front of the talks and has demanded an amnesty for all people affected in criminal and civil cases derived from the process.
The Prosecutor’s Office requested six years in prison and 27 years of disqualification for Buch, whom they accused of the crimes of embezzlement and prevarication. Specifically, the public ministry accused him of having signed Puigdemont’s bodyguard, Lluís Escolà, the Mossos sergeant who helped the former president flee to Belgium, after the stage of 155, as an Interior advisor in 2018.
Specifically, for the crime of embezzlement the court imposes four and a half years in prison on Buch and ten and a half years of absolute disqualification, while for the crime of prevarication he sentences him to nine and a half years of special disqualification from holding a job or public office.
In addition, the sentence condemns Buch and Escolà to jointly and severally pay compensation to the public treasury of the Generalitat in the sum of 52,712.26 euros. The sentence is not signed and an appeal is accepted before the Civil and Criminal Chamber of the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia.
Precisely at the doors of the Barcelona Court, where Buch has gone to receive personal notification of the sentence, the former minister has announced that, although he has not yet read the arguments of the resolution, he plans to appeal a sentence that he considers ” unfair.”
“We will appeal because I am convinced of what we did and anyone who saw the trial knows that this result is unfair,” lamented Buch, who was Minister of the Interior between 2018 and 2022, in the government of Quim Torra, and had under his command the Mossos d’Esquadra in the tense weeks due to the protests of the procés sentence. The former minister has emphasized that “in just one month” a sentence of “more than 80 pages” has already been written and he has expressed surprise at this speed. “Seeing the result of the sentence, which is condemning in an unjust and very beast, it seems that there was a great rush to condemn me,” added Buch,”
The general secretary of Junts, Jordi Turull, has assured that the sentence “is revenge, it is not justice.” “There is a judicial leadership and a State totally out of control against the independence movement. And enough is enough!” He stated in a message on the social network ‘X’, formerly Twitter.
For her part, the president of the party, Laura Borràs, has called the sentence barbaric and added: “Lawfare condemns when it points out and then the machinery completes the job.” “Prison sentences and disqualification that are outrageous. The State’s fight continues. Ours, too,” Borràs stressed in another message on the network.
