A Barcelona court has sentenced the former Catalan interior minister, Miquel Buch, to four and a half years in prison for hiring the police officer Lluís Escolà to act as bodyguard for president Carles Puigdemont in exile in Belgium, according to the verdict released this Thursday. In addition to the prison sentence, the former minister has also been banned from holding public office for 20 years - 10 and a half years for a crime of misuse of public funds, plus a further nine and a half year ban for abuse of his authority. The court also sentenced Escolà, an offcier of Catalonia's Mosso d'Esquadra police force who helped Puigdemont to make the journey into exile, to four years in prison and a 19 year ban on public employment. Despite the high sentences, the court says that they are reduced due to undue delays in the trial. The defence lawyers have already announced that they will appeal against the sentence at the Catalan High Court (TSJC), while Buch himself says the sentence is "outrageous".
The prosecutor Pedro Ariche asked the judge of section 2a of the Barcelona Audience to sentence Buch to 6 years in prison and 27 years of disqualification from public office, for misuse of public funds and abuse of his authority for having assigned sergeant Lluís Escolà to be a bodyguard for former Catalan president Puigdemont in exile, doing so in secret while hiring him as an adviser to the minister, from July 2018 to March 2019. For Escolà, the prosecutor sought a 4-year, 6-month prison term for the same crimes. In these months, Escolà received 52,712 euros in payment and the court orders that Buch and Escolà return this money to the coffers of the Catalan government.
Telltale tweets
In its decision, the court - consisting of judges José Carlos Iglesias, Maria Isabel Massigoge and Francisco Javier Molina - maintains that Lluís Escolà showed that he was working as a security escort for president Puigdemont on Twitter, and in particular after being hired by minister Buch as an advisor on security matters: "41 weeks making ourselves responsible for the [right honourable president of the Generalitat]. Until it's legal, it will be done legitimately," the sentence affirms that he published on August 6th, 2018. It adds that there is no record that Escolà asked for holidays from the interior ministry to make these trips abroad, a right that positions of responsibility like him also have, and that it was not necessary for him to carry a weapon or security materials to provide security for the president.
The court maintains that there were Mossos officers who in their holidays made trips to cover Puigdemont's security, that the "government of the Generalitat considered that this should be provided to him" and that, since it was not enough, Escolà took on this task of coordinating security escorts, a job which he had already done in Catalonia, and which caused him to be penalised by the Mossos, before being hired by the interior ministry.
A "flagrant" action
In addition, the court maintains that it is "fully convinced, without doubts or ambiguities, that this appointment was confirmed by minister Buch arbitrarily, with a purpose unrelated to the functions of that position - that being, to remuneratively cover Escolà's function of provide protection and security abroad to the person who had been president of the Generalitat." The court asserts that the administrative procedure allowing him to occupy the ninth position of occasional advisor to the interior ministry was correct, but "with a formal and unnecessary control", and that it was created just when Puigdemont asked for his prerogatives as a former Catalan president and the Spanish government did not grant him a security service abroad. Of the 14 reports that Escolà allegedly made for Buch, the court "doubts their authorship", in addition to their modest magnitude, the Mossos investigators said.
Due to all of this, the court maintains that the conduct of Miquel Buch "committed from his institutional position as interior minister was a patent, flagrant and resounding contravention of the legal system, contrary to the requirement of objectivity in the service of the general interest and the law". And it concludes that "public funds were diverted and it was made easier for Escolà to collect a salary for a position for which he did not fulfill any of the functions described in the position, and which was a real abuse of the Catalan government budget." And it sentences the former minister to four and a half years in prison and a 20-year ban from office.
No illegality
At the trial, in July, the former interior minister's defence lawyer, Judit Gené, called for his acquittal, arguing that Escolà was hired at the end of July 2018 as a position of confidence under Buch, and that it was a position that already existed in the department. She reiterated that it had nothing to do with the procedure started in August 2018 to protect ex-president Puigdemont abroad, when it was recognized that he had the legal prerogatives of his position, but that the Spanish government had refused to give him protection, citing that he was "a fugitive from justice" over the 1st October referendum. The lawyers for Escolà, Isabel Elbal and Gonzalo Boye, also demanded his acquittal. They detailed that he was operational head of Puigdemont's security detail until October 2017; he was employed by the Catalan ministry of the interior from July 25th, 2018 until March 2019, and he obtained a leave of absence from his work as a Mossos agent on July 15th, 2019 due to a serious spinal condition.
President Puigdemont testified as a witness in the trial, by video conference from a Belgian court, and assured that Escolà is "a great patriot" and that he accompanied him on trips to exile as a friend, as other Mossos agents also did, off duty or during holidays. He also denounced that "the Spanish government is breaking the law" by not permitting his security protection in exile.