From stepping on red carpet, to the cell. Of great manof doing and undoing at convenience for two decades amid applause and illuminated by pompous chandeliers, repudiated by those who previously exhibited the pride of rubbing shoulders with him. Felix Millet (Barcelona, 1935), a name associated until July 23, 2009 with the cream of Catalan power, earned a favorite place on the murky map of corruption.
A bourgeois businessman, who died at the age of 87, who will be remembered as the great looter of the Palace of Music, institution from which she had to leave through the back door in a hurry when the Mossos entered to search her before the astonished gaze of the entire Catalan society. And through the back door he also entered the Ciutat de la Justícia on March 1, 2017 to be tried for embezzlement, together with his right hand, Jordi Montullof €23 million accredited from the musical institution. The sentence came eight and a half years later: nine years and eight months in prison for four different crimes of embezzlement and misappropriation, influence peddling, money laundering and crime against Public Treasury. Of all the looting, the condemned have only returned 12 million.
The undisguised greed and impunity with which Millet acted for 20 years is demonstrated by the newspaper library. “Are about 400 peoplewe find ourselves everywhere and we are always the same”, Millet boasted even in his golden age before the journalists Andreu Farràs and Pere Cullell, authors of the book ‘L’oasi català’. It was the year 2002 and that oasis would still take a few years in demonstrating a miragea cardboard stage that began to crack Pasqual Maragall when he snapped at the then opposition leader Arthur More: “You have a problem and it’s called 3%.” Then the ‘Palau case’, the ‘3% case’, the ‘Pretoria case’ would break out…
Millet’s origins are of rancid ancestry. Coming from a bourgeois family, son of a banker and politician, his great-uncle, the musician Lluís Millet, was co-founder of the Orfeó institution that he ended up presiding over in 1978 with the aim of restoring the Palau. To this end, he promoted the creation of the Consorci del Palau de la Música, made up of the Generalitat, the City Council and the Barcelona Provincial Council and the Ministry of Culture.
An undisguised desire for power
His desire for power is picked up by the thirty positions in institutions and entities that he held He was president of Agrupació Mútua and its foundation, of the real estate agency AMCI Habitat, of Bankpime, vice-president of the Societat del Gran Teatre del Liceu, member of the board of trustees of the Fundació Conservatori del Palau, vice-president of the Fundació FC Barcelona or patron of the Association Spanish of Foundations. But his catapult, and his safe, was undoubtedly the Palau de la Música. The summary, of more than 60,000 pagesdemonstrates the extent to which he ended up treating the musical institution as property for his own benefit.
Millet paid with money from the Palau, which even came out in cash with 500-euro bills, from works of his house, trips and extraordinary payments, at scandalous weddings of his daughters, which was attended by renowned politicians and businessmen. Passing then, yes, half of the bill, more than 80,000, to his in-laws. Without mincing words, he justified that he did it to give “publicity” to the institution. “I benefited from funds of the foundation for my private use, for works in my house. It was a brutal mistake of mine and I already said it in 2009 feeling guilty, “he argued during a trial that lasted one year and four months and in which he sought a release in the penalty.
He also recognized that through the cultural entity the construction company Ferrovial paid kickbacks to CDC -up to 6.6 million euros- in exchange for the award of public works. “We shared 4%2.5% for CDC, 0.5% for Montull and 1% for me”, he recounted bluntly. The case was key to the implosion of the now extinct Convergència. Of course, Millet did not go beyond cite the name of the former party treasurer Daniel Oscar. He made no reference to any other leader.
The unresolved link with the FAES
The sentence to Millet was also the sentence to a time in which someone like him received the Creu de Sant Jordi -which was withdrawn a decade later- and rubbed shoulders with the bosses of both Catalonia and Spain. From Jordi Pujol to Jose Maria Aznar. With the latter, there are tentacles that have been left out of judicial scrutiny. And it is that between 2003 and 2004, during the absolute majority of the PP, Millet was the star signing of the board of trustees of the Future Catalonia Institutethe Catalan branch of the FAES, the ‘think tank’ of the popular. Josep Pique He was then the leader of the party in Catalonia and the president of the Palau, who at that time was focused on the expansion works of the building, was thoroughly involved in promoting the foundation with public and well-known dinners.
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In that period, the Palau received 12.6 million euros in subsidies from the Ministry of Culture. Those responsible for the Federació d’Associacions de Veïns de Barcelona (FAVB), which served as public prosecutor in the ‘Palau case’, pointed out in 2013 that the amount received does not conform to the actual certifications of works that were made. The difference, they noted, was Two millions of euros. And the Deloitte audit that was done when the scandal became public pointed out that the works actually cost 16 million and not the 26 that were said, bringing the figure to 10 million that remained in limbo. The investigation of this derivative never prospered.
Millet entered Brians 1 prison in June 2020, more than 10 years after the case broke out. It was of little use to him to claim pardon, alleging his advanced age and her illness. It was not until last October that he obtained the third degree, although in recent months he was admitted to the Terrassa Penitentiary Hospital until in January he was transferred to a private residence with medical assistance. Until today, in which none of those who shared with him feasts, businesses and guardians They have not said anything about who was shown to be a white glove thief.