The trial of Miquel Buch for allegedly hiring an escort for Carles Puigdemont while he was Minister of the Interior has been postponed to the end of June. The process was scheduled to take place during the month of April, but the judge recently decided to postpone it until three months from now. This has been announced by Buch himself, in statements to La 2 and Ràdio 4, where he has defended the hiring of a mosso as an adviser to the Department, whom the Prosecutor’s Office suspects that he was accompanying Puigdemont in Belgium.
The public ministry requests 6 years in prison and 27 years of disqualification for embezzlement and prevarication for Buch. The Prosecutor’s thesis is that the minister (2018-2020) would have signed up the sergeant of the Mossos d’Esquadra Lluís Escolà as an adviser to act as Puigdemont’s escort abroad, something that Buch has always denied. Escolà is asked for four and a half years in prison as a necessary cooperator.
The minister reiterated today that he incorporated him into his team to provide him with a “police vision”. “You try to surround yourself with those who know the most,” he argued. Buch has always denied that he had provided the escort service to Puigdemont. Likewise, the member of Junts has complained that one of the tests is that the mosso was out of Catalonia for a few days in January and August, something that has been limited to his vacation period. The former mayor of Premià de Mar also recalled that a Catalan police officer needs authorization from the Ministry of the Interior to work abroad.
Also regarding his time as minister, Buch maintains that he did not inform Laura Borràs that she was being investigated for an alleged division of contracts during her time at the Institució de les Lletres Catalanes. Borràs had revealed this in an interview on RAC1 in 2018, but hours later she contradicted herself and denied it in other media appearances.
Already then Buch had denied the current leader of Junts, and this Monday he assured that “there are witnesses who can certify” that what Borràs said “was not true.” The ex-minister has described the statements of the president of the suspended Parliament as a “bad move”. For Buch, this was “one of the worst things” that happened as head of the Interior. Among other reasons, he said, because these types of statements make “lose the confidence of the police force.”
Another of the most controversial points of Buch’s stage as minister was the management of the protests after the sentence of October 1. The police interventions placed, by some political spaces, Buch in the spotlight. He has even revealed, from then-president Quim Torra, that he had “a certain lack of understanding” with the task of the Interior. However, Buch has assured that he submitted his resignation three times and that Torra rejected them. Finally, even so, he ended up dismissing him in September 2020.
Who until a few months ago directed the public company Infraestructures, has explained that the president made “suggestions” about the role of the Mossos in those demonstrations in 2019, but has denied that he was asking them not to act.
