The Appeal Chamber of the National Court has confirmed that it will be this court that will try the lawyer Gonzalo Boye, lawyer of the former president of the Generalitat Carles Puigdemont, for a crime of money laundering in relation to Operation Mito, the alleged introduction into Spain of almost four tons of cocaine directed by José Ramón Prado Bugallo, alias Sito Miñanco, and the network created to hide the benefits obtained.
In an order, the Appeals Chamber rejects the lawyer’s appeal and confirms the resolution issued on July 26 by the Third Section of the Criminal Chamber in which it rejected his request. The magistrates explain that although the law does not contemplate the jurisdiction of the National Court for money laundering crimes, it does establish it when there is a connection with other crimes whose investigation is attributed to this court.
In this sense, the resolution points out that, as the Anti-Drug Prosecutor’s Office states in its indictment, in line with the indictment of the investigating judge, the operations carried out by Boye are actions directed by the drug trafficker Prado Bugallo. , better known as Sito Miñanco, to recover money seized at the Barajas airport on February 6, 2017.
Some facts for which the Public Ministry asks the lawyer for 9 years in prison and accuses him of a crime of money laundering, committed within a criminal organization, originating from drug trafficking, in competition with a continued crime of document falsification official.
“For all these reasons, once the object of the process has been established in the terms set forth, the connection between the facts for which Gonzalo Boye is accused and the possible antecedent crime against public health becomes evident, according to the Public Prosecutor’s Office, and is jurisdiction has been attributed to the Criminal Chamber of the National Court,” explains the order, against which an appeal can be filed before the Supreme Court.
