GERARD MATEO 7.5.2021
The judge closes the case against the ex-president’s wife, Marta Ferrusola, for her proven insanity
The Anticorruption Prosecutor’s Office asks for nine years in prison for the former president of the Generalitat of Catalonia Jordi Pujol Soley and custodial sentences that range between eight and 29 years for his seven children, after the National Court has closed the case against the matriarch of the clan, Marta Ferrusola, for her proven insanity.
Specifically, the prosecution requests 29 years for the clan’s eldest son, Jordi Pujol Ferrusola, Junior; 14 years for Josep Pujol; and eight for the other five siblings: Marta, Pere, Oriol, Mireia and Oleguer Pujol Ferrusola. For Mercè Gironés, Junior’s ex-wife, she requests 17 years.
Money laundering, counterfeiting and fraud
Anti-corruption accuses the former Catalan president of the crimes of illicit association and money laundering, which he committed with the rest of his family “at least since 1991”, from the award of contracts to “certain businessmen”, whom he favored in different public tenders of the Catalan Administration, according to the prosecution, giving rise to a network of “patronage”.
In the case of Júnior, Anti-Corruption adds to these crimes those of falsification of a commercial document, five crimes against the Public Treasury and another one of frustration of the execution.
Millionaire fines
Regarding the fines they request for the clan, the public prosecutors ares interested in the highest for the eldest of the Pujol brothers, for whom they asks for 6.84 million euros, especially for crimes against the Public Treasury, while for his ex-wife the figure amounts to 668,000 euros; for Josep Pujol 932,000 euros and for the patriarch it amounts to 204,000 euros.
To these amounts must be added those reflected in the money laundering section, in which the prosecution indicates that the fine must be the amounts available to all of them (the seven siblings, the father and Gironés) that amounted to 38, 7 million euros; 8.17 million US dollars; 2.73 million Mexican dollars and 95,344 pounds sterling.
A framework
The accusation maintains that Jordi Pujol Soley and Marta Ferrusola agreed to distribute those funds of illicit origin in accounts opened in the name of this and of her seven children in the Andorran Banca Reig (current Andbank after the merger with Banc Agrícola). The marriage also approved that it was their first-born who managed the funds and took care of the distribution.
That illicit patrimony was hidden from the Public Treasury and later surfaced through money laundering operations in which other members of the clan participated, according to the prosecution. Among them, the creation of companies in tax havens; the opening of accounts in the name of third parties; and multiple transfers and cash receipts.
One step away from judgment
Last July, the judge of the National Court proposed to try the Pujol clan in the context of the Pujol case, after years of investigation. The family denies all the facts, mentions that the fortune is an inheritance and, with the support of TV3, points to the “sewers of the State”.
The justice also proceeded against 18 other people for having participated or collaborated in the aforementioned illegal activities, although, three weeks ago, it exonerated one of them (Carlos Sumarroca Coixet, who was being investigated for money laundering and documentary falsification) and withdrew both crimes against the Public Treasury that weighed on Mercè Gironés, Jordi Pujol Ferrusola’s ex-wife. For all of them it asks for two to three years and fines ranging between 200,000 euros and eight million.
https://cronicaglobal.elespanol.com/vida/anticorrupcion-carcel-jordi-pujol_480049_102.html
Add comment