Marcos Lamelas. Barcelona 11/08/2019 05:00
JxCAT and PDeCAT have asked the militants and elected party members of both formations an extraordinary spill to pay the defenses of a dozen of elected members of these parties, defendants for their participation in the 1-O, in the summary of the judicial instruction of the court of instruction number 13 of Barcelona, according to sources of both formations. The objective: to collect an amount close to 50,000 euros to cover the costs of the defense lawyers of the defendants who are charged with various crimes for having facilitated the 1-O consultation for acts such as facilitating the publicity that the Constitutional Court had prohibited or for having stolen the census to be able to vote on October 1, 2017.
The spill has been raised at a price of at least 25 euros per person. But that is for grassroots militants and the figure is rising to reach a salary percentage in the cases of deputies and senior officials. Everyone who has a position linked to the public sector has had to pay more, in a phased manner, based on income.
Those charged by 1-O in this case, derived from the one that has already been tried in the Supreme Court, add up to 30 people. They are the high positions and second lines on which Carles Puigdemont and Oriol Junqueras supported to carry out the consultation two years ago. But, luckily, the figure diminished until it reached only eight. To begin with, a total of 13 have been set aside for positions linked to ERC, and then those that were in public companies that had civil liability insurance.
This has allowed the number to be reduced to eight people, among which are the Secretary of Communication of the Government, Antoni Molons; former secretary of the presidency Joaquim Nin; or the former secretary of Government Meritxell Massó; among others.
When creating a joint committee, all the JxCAT members who do not militate but receive a salary for their seats are included in the solidarity contribution
To assume the collection of funds, JxCAT and the PDeCAT have created a joint committee that manages this type of solidarity with the defendants. The committee is formed by the president of the PDeCAT David Bonvehí, the ‘Regional minister’ of the Presidency, Meritxell Budó; JxCAT spokesman in the Parliament, Albert Batet, and the former senior CDC official, Francesc Sànchez.
The defense of prisoners and accused by the so-called “events of October” is very expensive for the PDeCAT. In the game they already estimate that when everything ends in total this game will exceed one million euros long. In addition, they are defraying part of the legal costs of exile, such as payments to lawyer Gonzalo Boye, according to sources from this party.
That is why JxCAT has been included: where many deputies do not militate in the PDeCAT. By including the joint committee has been able to count on the salaries of deputies who do not militate in the party, both in the Congress in Madrid – Jaume Alonso Cuevillas or Laura Borràs – or the independents who sit in the Parliament, as the former synchronized swimmer trainer, Anna Tarrés. Nobody gets rid
The case of TV3
Another way to reduce the number of defendants who receive the aid has been segregating those linked to the CCMA Audiovisual Media Corporation, the ‘holding’ that controls TV3 and Catalunya Ràdio and that has civil liability insurance. This is the case of the vice president of the CCMA, Núria Llorach and three other defendants linked to this public company, which in the first quarter of 2018 tendered its civil liability contract, as stated in the entity’s memory in 2018.
For the executives and employees of the CCMA, civil liability insurance has been used to cover the defense of those accused by the 1-O.
However, legal sources have questioned the regularity of this strategy. First, because the CCMA is a public company and the premium of that insurance to give that coverage is public money that in principle could not be dedicated to that. And, second, because it is a criminal case and that type of insurance is called civil liability. In the case of Núria Llorach, the CCMA vice president is accused of disobedience, as are the rest of the company’s charges.
Sector on the run
Precisely, the insurance sector was a fleeing sector with the Catalan political crisis two years ago. Segurcaixa terminated unilaterally the civil liability policies of the Generalitat and the Parliament that covered the activity of senior officials. He did so in October 2017, after the Legal Transition Law was passed in the Parliament, which in the opinion of the company generated an environment of legal insecurity.
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