Puigdemont tries to annul his prosecution and the prosecutor accuses him of "procedural trickery"

The lawyer of the former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont has demanded today that the indictment issued by Judge Pablo Llarena in 2018 be annulled, which would force the Spanish justice system to initiate a new procedure to claim the petition to the European Parliament.

In a hearing held today in the Supreme Court, the lawyer for the former Catalan president has defended his appeal against Llarena’s latest order for which he withdrew the crime of sedition, after its repeal of the Penal Code, and prosecuted him for embezzlement of public funds and disobedience.

The lawyer intends that these resolutions are without effect, understanding that they have become “obsolete”. In the initial indictment, in May 2018, it was for the crime of rebellion, and which was later modified for sedition after passing the sentence regarding the ERC leader Oriol Junqueras and eight others, in October 2019.

This resolution has had to be modified again after the Government has repealed the crime of sedition. In his opinion, the accusation against Puigdemont has been “out of date”. For this reason, he considers that a new prosecution should be issued and the corresponding petition submitted to the European Parliament given the former president’s status as an MEP. This step would further delay his judicial process, open since 2017 when he fled Spain to avoid prison and trial against him.

Gonzalo Boye’s position was categorically rejected by the prosecutor Javier Zaragoza, who accused the former president’s defense of using a “procedural ruse” to further delay the judicial process that has been open for six years.

For her part, the State lawyer, Rosa María Seoane, has warned the defense lawyers that this is not the procedural moment to define the type of crimes for which they should be accused, but that the moment will be in the trial, when sit in the dock. This responds to the position of the lawyers to oppose that what happened by the then leaders of the Generalitat committed a crime of aggravated embezzlement for using public funds to organize the referendum on October 1, 2017.

In fact, Seoane defended in his letter that Puigdemont should be accused of the crimes of public disorder and minor embezzlement, although he acknowledges that this will be defined in the trial. The Criminal Chamber of the high court has already warned that the now repealed sedition cannot be equated with the crime of public disorder.

Seoane warned the defenses that they cannot invoke the sentence or the legislative reforms to try to claim that the case return to the beginning because it was because of them, who are “on the run”, that the case has been “frozen” for five years.

For his part, the prosecutor Zaragoza referred to the order of the Second Chamber that adapted the sentence of the ‘procés’ to the reform that repealed the sedition and maintained the sentence for the most serious embezzlement. As the Chamber has done, the representative of the public ministry understands that despite the reform that modified the crime of embezzlement to reduce the penalties in those cases where there was no personal gain, it cannot be applied in this case. “The legislative reform of this crime can never be applied to public purposes that are not legitimate, because they are criminal and criminal,” he concludes in his intervention before the Chamber, which will issue a resolution in the coming days.