The former president of the Generalitat Carles Puigdemont has demanded from the Court of Auditors his acquittal in the procedure in which he tries to settle the damage that former senior officials of the Government caused to the public coffers due to the referendum of October 1, considering that ” “It has not been possible to determine, specify, or break down the amount allegedly diverted.”
In its written conclusions, to which La Vanguardia has had access, Puigdemont’s defense maintains that neither the Public Prosecutor’s Office nor the Catalan Civil Society, which are asking for 3.1 million euros and 5 million euros, respectively, have not determined responsibility. accountant of the former president “despite all the evidence carried out.” “Or precisely by virtue of the evidence carried out, which does not allow us to appreciate any possibility of such a determination,” he adds.
In the 24-page document there is not a single mention of the amnesty law, which is expected to be definitively approved in the coming weeks. Its publication in the Official State Gazette will lead to the consequent filing or suspension of this procedure in the Court of Accounts. However, Puigdemont’s defense, rushing the deadlines, presented this Friday its written conclusions in which it requests acquittal, in addition to the ruling completely rejecting the claims of the lawsuits presented by the Prosecutor’s Office and the Catalan Civil Society against him and another 34 former senior officials of the Generalitat for the illegal consultation and the Government’s foreign action.
Puigdemont resorts to the sentencing of the process, by which the main leaders were convicted of a crime of sedition in competition with embezzlement, to defend that it shows that several of the actions attributed to him “did not generate any patrimonial displacement to the detriment of the public coffers.” “We are talking about expenses that did not even materialize and that, therefore, in the present procedure have not been able to be demonstrated.” “This party does not know what specific action is being attributed to its client because no action carried out by him is detailed,” says his lawyer Gonzalo Boye.
A version that is completely different from the one maintained by the Prosecutor’s Office, from which responsibility for the payments is attributed to him as the highest authority in Catalonia at that time. That he is accused of participating and directing all the projects requires, according to the former president’s defense, a “greater concreteness” than that which can be derived from being then president of the Generalitat. And this does not make him “automatically responsible for everything that supposedly occurs irregularly under his command,” he emphasizes.
