The false dossier on XavierTrias disseminated in October 2014 through the newspaper El by the so-called patriotic police was drawn up by the head of French customs in Toulouse de Languedoc, Jean-Michel Pillon, according to the documentation accessed by La Vanguardia and RAC1.
The high-ranking French official – “director of first-class customs services, attached to the position of senior administrator of customs and indirect duties in Toulouse de Languedoc”, ratified in his position in the summer of 2022 – received the request information about Trias through an email sent in August 2014, a copy of which accompanies this information, from Commissioner Enrique García Castaño, in which he informs him that “we are continuing with the Catalan problem” and “I need to know if our friends [Trias and his brother Juan Maria] have accounts in Switzerland”.
The assignment evolved and in the end ended up generating a 31-page report in which the only truth was the politician’s name, some press clippings and scant references to property records. The rest, especially the ownership of supposed accounts in Switzerland, with 13 million euros and another two in Spain, were a complete invention.
But the French policeman, in charge of fighting fraud at the most important customs in the south of France, earned 25,000 euros in black money from the funds reserved by the Spanish Ministry of the Interior.
It was not the only assignment of this kind. It was also invented that Jordi Pujol Ferrusola, the eldest son of former president Jordi Pujol, appeared on the Falciani list, which collected the names of thousands of account holders in Switzerland at the HSBC bank. This document ended in the case against the Pujol family that is being heard at the National Court by judge Santiago Pedraz.
The French collaborator of García Castaño received at least one more assignment, in this case linked to the Palau case, on accounts of its president, Fèlix Millet, and on people from CDC, the nationalist party, although it is not known which was the result. In total, according to the sources consulted, the swaggering French customs official pocketed 50,000 euros in black money.
With the dossier in hand, the Spanish police, without finding out if the data were true, leaked it to the newspaper usually used to filter these fake documents, El . I had already done it before with the dossier on Jordi Pujol about an alleged foundation in Geneva (Switzerland) with hundreds of millions, in November 2012; the alleged connection of the then president Artur Mas with Pujol accounts in Liechtenstein, in September 2024. On October 28, 2024, he published the non-existent account of Xavier Trias at UBS.
The publication of the dossier in the aforementioned Madrid newspaper was accompanied by pressure from senior officials of the Ministry of the Interior on other media to echo the information in their editions the following day. In those conversations, the senior ministerial officials insisted on the veracity of the accusations against the mayor of Barcelona.
In view of the firm reaction of the mayor of Barcelona when the information was published, denying the accusations and suing their authors, the police tried to get more information. García Castaño sent the report to the UDEF, the unit dedicated to the prosecution of economic crime, and to Sepblac, the body dependent on the Ministry of Economy and the Bank of Spain, which appoints the president, in charge of combating money laundering. None of this came to fruition and Trias himself managed to get the Swiss bank in which he theoretically held an account to quickly deny it, pointing out in a statement that even the numbering did not match what is done to serve.
A report drawn up just over a month later would end up giving an account of the arrangements made. The document, which is also published alongside this information, acknowledges that “since some discrepancies have arisen regarding the information received [from Customs Director Pillon], which break all the self-imposed security rules of the informants, it is considered a citation for the clarification of some points and they tell us that the information is absolutely reliable and that Xavier Trias y Vidal de Llobatera has accounts in Switzerland, but that due to the contacts he has in the Swiss country with Josef Ackerman, he is one of the few people who enjoy the privilege of being able to change numbers every five days, which makes it practically impossible to be investigated”. Colorful argument to explain that the account was untraceable, but not because of the numbering change, but because it did not exist.
The internal report of the police, which was sent to the Ministry of the Interior giving explanations, concludes by defending its action in this dark affair: “All this investigation, as can be seen from this report, is carried out in all its extremes by the corresponding units of the National Police Force without there being any special or secret unit dedicated to carrying out any kind of investigation outside the law, as has been suggested by some means of communication, or for a long time about Catalan independence politicians”.
