The AND09871 code does not correspond to the name of an android, nor to the identification of a planet. It is the door to an even more explosive and still unbearable reality, sometimes epatante, whose limits have not yet been determined. This is the numbering of the first account that the Pujol family opened in Andorra on November 21, 1990, the place where "capitals of unknown origin" began to flow from that date and which was the first in which Police were set to develop investigations that have uncovered the greatest case, quantitatively and qualitatively, of corruption in the history of Spain.
The members of the Pujol clan institutionalized bribery and corruption in Catalonia, provoked the "social death" of those who resisted and in their aspiration to dominate the world they got together with the best of each house, from partners with whom they bleached the money of the drug, even businessmen accused of bribing millions in Argentina to the then president Cristina Fernández Kirchner . They have shared frontmen with Correa and Rato , and, put to pay commissions to make their way into the most unexpected areas - from landfills, to casinos and to the sale of medical equipment -, they were paid to the already deceased prince Zourab Tchokotoua, friend King emeritus staff.
The UDEF report that affirms all this, still conditionally and allegedly, and that it has recently been handed over to the judge, argues that the members that make up the family almond respond perfectly to the concept of "organized crime" and, for the first time, quantify in 290 million euros the money of which they have appropriated. Although in a recognizedly inaccurate and inaccurate way. Clearly down.
DANCE OF FIGURES AND NEW COUNTRIES
Since a police report published by El Mundo uncovered the open secret of the spurious enrichment of the Pujol family, many figures have been given. Initially, the most serious analyzes affirmed that the societies controlled mainly by the elders of the family had "moved" at least 581,270,429 euros.
More imprecise police documents later claimed that it was "one of the largest fortunes in Spain," so large that it caused "stupor." And, later, from the Interior Ministry of Jorge Fernández Díaz, who splashed in the deaf battle that was being fought in the sewers of the State, it was affirmed that the possessions of the Catalan clan were valued at 1.8 billion euros.
Probably the amounts with which the Pujol have worked are close to this last figure, but it would not necessarily be money of their property but corresponding to the transactions they have been making over the years. Although, for the moment, even that is not accredited . The editor of the last report of the UDEF , who dares with the figure of 290 million, recognizes that there are gaps in the calculations because many countries have not wanted to collaborate. "It is foreseeable," he laments, "that knowledge of what happened in the financial positions held in those places would substantially alter the calculations."
And it has not taken long to see how right he is because since he signed his conclusions - on July 31 - and when there are barely a few weeks left before the instruction ends at the National Court, two countries have sent crucial data . Andorra has communicated the number of five accounts related to the Pujol and unknown so far; Switzerland has revealed that it has found an investment fund belonging to the family with 18 million more from "corrupt behaviors." And the Treasury has discovered that, with the corporate framework of Robert Ribes, an Andorran frontman, the family hid another 9 million in Panama.
Probably the most striking moment in this story came at the beginning, when that conversation between the ex-girlfriend of Jordi Pujol Ferrusola (JPF), Victoria Álvarez , and the Catalan PP leader Alicia Sánchez Camacho , recorded at the restaurant La Camargue of Barcelona by the Agency of Detectives Method 3 commissioned by the Catalan Socialists. Little by little it began to be known that the accusation that Pascual Maragall, then President, launched in 2005 in the Parliament in the face of Jordi Pujol on the charge of commissions of 3% - and which he later withdrew - was a triviality next to what It was really happening.
Victoria Álvarez told how JPF put money into fountains in Andorran banks and transferred it to the old way, in the trunk of the car. It was learned that the clan was posing as the Holy Family in the banks of the neighboring country, that Marta Ferrusola , the matriarch was calling herself the superior mother and that, when she wanted to transfer two million euros, she asked to be sent “two missals ». And it transcended the collection of luxury cars - photos of the Lamborghini of more than 800,000 euros came out - that JPF had bought at a bargain price. Nothing strange in someone who passes the toll ticket the highway to the company.
But the president continued to assure that all that world of excesses in which he did not seem to fit had its origin in the family fortune, in the inheritance that his father left him and that had been conveniently administered. As he did with Maragall, he again shamelessly removed his nails in the parliamentary appearance. "If you go reaping a part of a branch, in the end the whole branch falls and the nests in it until the whole tree falls," he released.
CATALAN BANK
However, police investigations had no problem in going back to the root. These inquiries strongly deny that the inheritance of Pujol and Ferrusola are at the base of the family's money. There is no notarized document to prove it. And they date back to the days of Catalan Banking in 1984 because researchers believe that this is the heritage base of what will then grow exponentially. Explains the 600 million pesetas of the sale of the entity and collects the almost two million of a loan received by the family not returned in a dark case whose investigation never agreed politically, according to the prosecutor who carried it out.
From there, the agents have tried to rename each operation, large and small. Because although it is true that there are operations of the Pujol in which millions are handled, most of the payments are of modest amounts. The researchers affirm that «from the past the Pujol Ferrusola family would have taken advantage of their privileged position in order to accumulate an excessive wealth». They charged commissions intervening in all departments and at all levels of the Administration, a part of which went to Convergència i Unió -JPF acted as treasurer of the training-while the other was entered into their accounts abroad. There are photographs of post it in the contracts where 5% of the investment is calculated to donate as coima.
Two personal agendas of JPF, the most active of all in a family that "distributed the papers", enclose more than 29 visits to departments of the Generalitat, Development, Provincial ... There is an entry of 8.3 million pesetas from of the sale made by De la Rosa of a building to the Generalitat for an amount of 1,500 million . Later, the 5.6 million euros obtained by «devising» and selling the landfills of Guïlles and Vacamorta, facilities that were put in place despite being plagued by irregularities, thanks to the direct intervention of the Pujol. An operation that required a full financial engineering deployment to hide revenues: Andorra, Switzerland and the Nordics APS company in Denmark, in which a company domiciled in the Isle of Man.
But the report also counts the most frequent commissions, the most modest ones , such as the one of 391,450.40 euros obtained for the services contracted and not provided in the ITV case; o The 348,000 euros in collaboration with projects and infrastructure concessions in Mexico; or 188,777 of the project of construction of electrical networks in Gabon.
As a way to contextualize the way the Pujol family behaves, the UDEF report gathers especially delicate moments. The investigator draws the judge's attention to the relationship between Jordi Pujol Ferrusola and the Felip brothers (advisor in the Government) and Jordi Puig, his partner in some businesses. According to account, Jordi Puig owed JPF 260,000 euros for allegedly the joint investment of a property that refused to pay him and he claimed them from Felip.
The way in which the final return of the money is carried out suggests money laundering to the police officers who add: «It is feasible that money from other more serious types of criminal offenses such as large-scale drug trafficking attributable to third parties be used». The UDEF clarifies that Pujol has nothing to do with the drug but suggests that his partner does and that he knew it.
The Pujol, according to the investigation, used Juan Manuel Rosillo , a businessman of Mexican origin who arrived when the Olympics, began construction of the Mar Mar neighborhood, was convicted of defrauding Hacienda 8.5 million and ended up escaping to Panama after having caused a traffic accident in which a person died. They sold apartments in Panama to members of the Russian mafia who, feeling cheated, were about to give them a scare. And they allied in Argentina, where they opted for the management of three casinos, with Isolux, whose leaders were involved in the case of Los Cuadernos del Centeno, caused by the notes that a taxi driver took each time he accompanied a senior Argentine government to the headquarters of a large construction company to receive cash gifts. The former president Cristina Kirchner was investigated for having collected more than $ 12.6 million from Isolux.
The voracity of the Pujol, according to police reports, does not seem to have barriers. They relate from the difficulties they have had to obtain evidence and testimonies for the fear of people facing them to some acts of blackmail. «In November of the year 2000, one of the main health mutuals in Catalonia called L 'Aliança was partially subjected to administrative intervention by the Generalitat on the occasion of its financial irregularities. Suspiciously, the Department of Economy lifted the government restrictions coinciding with the turnover by the holding company Europraxis to that mutual of 109,669.93 euros, ”they describe.
And it is a voracity that they also attribute to the political family. According to the testimony of the former owners of the Focio company, the Administration made their lives impossible - they sealed them a parking lot for trucks, declared the floodplains - until they yielded and sold some properties to the Copisa Group, an ally of Jordi Pujol Ferrusola. After the deed they had to pay an intermediation that had never existed. «He appeared at the headquarters of the company Ramón Gironés, father of Mercedes Gironés -ex wife of the oldest of the Pujol- to demand the collection of 3% of the total amount of the sale» of more than 30 million euros. They decided to pay 1%.
Timber and hotel businesses in Mexico, railroads in Morocco, medical supplies in Uganda, casinos in Argentina ... There is no sector that resists covering the Pujol family with manna that has done its best to prevent the action of Justice -he paid a money to a frontman to lie to the judge- and that is not allowed to settle. JPF was accused of evading 14 million in full investigation and of trying to launder money from Soto del Real. The Pujol assure, however, that they are going to make a Sandro Rosell and everything will be nothing. Things of a family that is believed still sacred.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
Know more- Jordi Pujol Ferrusola
- UDEF
- Andorra
- Spain
- Catalonia
- Banking
- ITV
- Jordi Pujol
- Marta Ferrusola
- Corruption
Corruption Los Pujol: seven years of provisional freedom plagued by incumbents and unjustified money
Politics Censor the alleged diversion of public funds for the 2010 CDC election campaign
PoliticsArrimadas places Citizens as opposition leader before the PSOE pact with "populists and nationalists"