This is how the Catalan government swelled the brother of Ximo Puig: honors with Jordi Pujol and 591,000 euros since 2003

• Subsidies..The companies of the brother of Ximo Puig have received 850,000 euros from the Valencian Government since 2015
• Profile..The brother of Puig: from the bar to subsidy focus

The long career as an entrepreneur of the audiovisual sector of Francis Puig, brother of the president of the Valencian Generalitat , Ximo Puig, concentrating his activity in the region of Els Ports, has benefited from the substantial assistance provided by different administrations, including governments of the Valencian Community - for whose aid it will declare as investigated - but also by the Generalitat of Catalonia that, since the time of Jordi Pujol, has generously watered the societies managed by Puig.

According to documentation held by EL MUNDO, Comunicacions dels Ports SA and Mas Mut Produccions SLU have received from the Catalan Government no less than 591,000 euros of public money since 2003, the year in which the then president, Jordi Pujol, gave Francis Puig the «Prize National Broadcasting Broadcasting », endowed with 15,000 euros, at a gala held at the Liceu Theater.

Pujol then praised the initiative of "a small radio station in a small region in the interior of the province that has been able to spread Catalan culture and language with limited resources but eager to work." That was more than 15 years ago and Radio Els Ports already had as many as half a county. Almost as many as Ximo Puig with the rod of command of Mayor of Morella, the capital of the region that digested with enormous popular recognition between 1995 and 2012.

Those honors of Pujol - the resolution was signed by the then first Minister, Artur Mas, who was a CiU candidate that same year and lost to Pasqual Maragall - were the master key to successfully access the public aid calls to the media of the Generalitat of Catalonia. Five years after that award, in 2008, Ximo Puig joined his town, Morella, in the Ramon Llull Foundation, which was intended as a link between Catalan in different territories. Organizations such as Acció Cultural del País Valencià, the main tentacle of Catalanism in the Valencian Community - whose historical president, the editor Eliseu Climent, were already investigated by the Civil Guard in the "Pretoria case" - and Omnium Cultural, the organization that promoted the citizen mobilization of procés and whose president since 2015, Jordi Cuixart, has been sentenced to nine years in prison by the Supreme Court for a crime of sedition.

In those years, subsidies to the media in Catalan, both in Catalonia and in the so-called "peripheral territories", depended on the Department of Culture. Between 2003 and 2006, with the first tripartite government chaired by the socialist Maragall - a federalist of shared thought with Ximo Puig -, it is not known that Francis Puig's companies received subsidies.

But as of 2008, with the second left-wing tripartite chaired by the socialist José Montilla, with Josep Lluis Carod Rovira as vice president, the Department of Culture began to irrigate Comunicacions dels Ports SA. He did it uninterruptedly in the years 2008 (12,518 euros), 2009 (18,324 euros) and 2010 (58,889 euros), with Esquerra Republicana controlling the tap. These were days when Mayor Ximo Puig did not hesitate to take a friendly photo with Carod Rovira, something that does not fit with the softened profile of Puig deploys today as president.

Francis Puig's good relationship with the Catalan government remained with the convergent Artur Mas, winner at the end of an autonomous election in November 2010. The following year, Comunicacions dels Ports received 62,248 euros in aid for both its radio and television . Already in 2012, the aids to the media passed from the Department of Culture to the Presidency of the Generalitat of Catalonia. And Francis Puig expands his earnings, since he not only receives through Comunicacions dels Ports, but also adds those obtained by Mas Mut Produccions for the website www.comarquesnord.cat, a digital portal that is presented as a «means of communication from the regions of Els Ports and the Maestrat (north of the Valencià Country) and the Matarranya (south of Teruel) ». From 2013 to 2017, this portal has received 57,509 euros.

The documentation held by this newspaper also proves that under the presidency of Carles Puigdemont, escaped from justice, Francis Puig's companies also agreed to the Catalan promotion plan in the media: Comunicacions dels Ports received 62,040 euros and Canal Maestrat another 27,084 euros.

In the complaint filed by the Popular Party for alleged irregularities in the justification of the subsidies received by Francis Puig of the Valencian Government, the popular not only denounce crimes against public finances, but also possible embezzlement. In the PP considers, for example, that Puig used the same invoices and even identical payrolls to justify aid for the same concept in different administrations.

The PP also establishes a direct connection between the companies of Francis Puig and those controlled by two other entrepreneurs in the same area of ​​influence in Morella, the Adell Bover brothers. Its companies, Canal Maestrat and Kriol Producciones, have also received grants from the Valencian Government for the promotion of language in the media.

After the denunciation of a former worker of Canal Maestrat, who has also given a statement to the Prosecutor's Office -he said that the Adell Bover brothers said that they intended to “train” when Ximo Puig was president- the Department of Education of the Valencian Generalitat, in the hands of Compromís, initiated an extraordinary audit procedure that has concluded with a claim for the return of nearly 200,000 euros of public money. Francis Puig, for now, has not been claimed a single euro of almost 850,000 captured, but is cited to testify as investigated in the complaint of the PP.

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