• Courts Investigate high-ranking Government officials for embezzling in the international promotion of independence

New evidence against the possible use of public funds to internationalize the independence process. The Court of Instruction number 18 of Barcelona has received a report from the Belgian justice in which it confirms that a company in this country, which in 2015 received 4,132 euros of money from the Generalitat for a report on defense, was investigated in Belgium by corruption and money laundering. The judge is investigating whether the Generalitat used foreign action contracts to internationalize the 'procés' to pay for reports or academic papers. In this sense, it considers that there is a certain alleged irregularity in some of these concessions, such as a defense study that the Generalitat commissioned from the Belgian company BVBA Services.

That is why it requested information about this company through a European Investigation Order (OEA) and the Belgian authorities have reported that the company was investigated by the Brussels Prosecutor's Office for "money laundering and corruption", in proceedings dating from 2017. They also identify Three people who directed or administered the company, of Belgian and German nationalities, and that the firm "has not had employees", has not been subject to control with regard to its tax obligations and was dissolved in 2018.

The Barcelona court considers that there are alleged irregularities in the process of contracting the report since the Generalitat did not maintain any communication with the company and left the intermediation in the hands of the sociologist Salvador Cardús, who was a member of the Advisory Council for the National Transition and is summoned to testify as a witness in the case. Furthermore, it was also unable to prove who is the owner of the Belgian account to which the payment was transferred.

In this open procedure in Barcelona, ​​the former minister Raül Romeva is investigated, who was pardoned after being convicted of sedition, and a dozen charges from the Government for allegedly embezzling almost one million euros to "internationalize" the "procés" through finger contracts to "front" companies. The process began after detecting the Court of Auditors that the Generalitat had allocated public funds to activities that do not fall within its powers and may "disturb" the direction of Spanish foreign policy.

The Prosecutor's Office investigated that these alleged irregularities in the awarding of contracts and subsidies, awarded "by hand" or chopped up to avoid public tenders, were not aimed at "promoting the image of Catalonia, the objective of Foreign Action, but at internationalizing the process on the right to decide "and that is why the court accuses of embezzlement former officials of the Catalan administration such as the former secretary of the Diplocat Albert Royo, the former secretary of the Government Victor Culell, the former secretary general of the Department of Foreign Action Aleix Villatoro and the former Secretary of Foreign Affairs of the Generalitat Roger Albinyana, among others.

Among the contracts under suspicion are academic works outside the competence of the Generalitat, such as explaining "the creation of the structures of a new State once Catalonia achieves independence."

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