Surprise in the indictment of the State Attorney in the case on 1-O that will try the closest collaborators of Oriol Junqueras in 2017. The prosecution that reports to the Ministry of Justice has not requested any penalty for the ERC leader and current president of the Port of Barcelona, Lluís Salvadó, to whom the Prosecutor’s Office, on the other hand, requests six years and three months in prison.
It is the main novelty of the indictment of the State Attorney, to which elDiario.es has had access. The Legal Profession does accuse the other two defendants, the ERC parliamentarian Josep Maria Jové, whom it asks for 3 and a half years in prison for embezzlement, and the Minister of Culture Natàlia Garriga, whom it requests a year of disqualification for disobedience.
In its letter, the Lawyer does not mention Salvadó even once despite the fact that he was part of the hard core of the Ministry of Economy led by Oriol Junqueras as Secretary of Finance. This is the first relevant difference in criteria between the Prosecutor’s Office and the State Attorney’s Office in the case that will judge the preparations for 1-O, given that Salvadó was one of the defendants since the beginning of the case in 2017.
As is already the case in the case of the Supreme Court process, the Prosecutor’s Office and the Lawyers disagree on the type of embezzlement to apply to the sovereignist leaders. While the Prosecutor’s Office accuses Jové and Salvadó of embezzlement for profit to finance the 1-O referendum, the Lawyers, on the other hand, believes that Jové committed one of the types of embezzlement agreed between PSOE and ERC, which is punished by “ different public use” of public resources, but without profit.
This different interpretation means that the penalties requested by the Prosecutor’s Office are higher than those claimed by the State Attorney’s Office. The Public Ministry asks Jové for seven years in prison, a sentence that the Lawyers reduce by half. The disqualification claimed for Jové is also ostensibly different: 32 years for the Prosecutor’s Office; seven the State Attorney’s Office.
In its letter, the Lawyers maintain that Jové –general secretary of the vice presidency on 1-O– and Garriga –director of department services– “disregarded” the mandates of the Constitutional Court in order not to promote the referendum and “carried out actions aimed at make possible” its celebration.
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