Pedro Ariche Axpe, prosecutor lieutenant of the Superior Prosecutor’s Office of Catalonia, has stated that the dance of commands causes “perplexity” and has recalled that “requests for information” from judicial investigations are not “admissible”
Pedro Ariche AxpeLieutenant Prosecutor of the Superior Prosecutor’s Office of Cataloniahas taken advantage of a few minutes of his appearance in the Parliament of Catalonia, in the Study Commission on the Police Model, to give the Government a public slap on the wrist about the political management of the Mossos d’Esquadra. To date, no spokesman for the public ministry had assessed the latest crisis triggered in the leadership of the Catalan police after the dismissal of the chief commissioner, Josep Maria Estela, a resignation that has revived suspicions of political interference in the functioning of the police force. “It causes perplexity” the “continuous change” of chiefs at the head of the Mossos, he has lamented.
“Each handover” supposes a “change of project”, of “restructuring”, of “organizational model” and, also, a “change of interlocutors”. “Imagine”, he questioned the parliamentary spokesmen present in the commission, that in recent years there had been “five changes of superior prosecutor”. “It would cause perplexity,” he reiterated. In reality, there have been six changes since 1-O 2017. These are the names of the different commissioners who have led the Catalan police in the last five years: Josep Lluís Trapero, Ferran López, Miquel Esquius, Eduard Sallent, Josep Lluís Trapero, Josep Maria Estela and, for two weeks, Eduard Sallent, again.
Ariche has not asked the Government to stop the dance of commands in the Catalan police. “Because we can’t ask for it.” But he has underlined that a “certain stability” is “necessary” for the proper functioning of the police and judges and prosecutors.
The suspicion of political interference
And about one of the fundamental questions about the crisis of the Catalan police –perhaps the most relevant–, the suspicion that political interference above all tries to intervene in criminal investigations. the intendant Tony Rodriguezformer head of the General Commissioner for Criminal Investigation, has denounced that he was dismissed, after the departure of Major Josep Lluis Traperoat the end of 2021, because he had a confrontation with the current chief commissioner, Eduard Sallent, because the latter requested information on the progress of anti-corruption investigations that affected the Government itself: especially the then ‘minister’ of the Interior, Miquel Buch , but also to the former president of the Parliament, Laura Borràs.
When the Mossos function as judicial police “they functionally depend on judges and prosecutors”, he recalled. “We reject, and are not admissible, interference of any kind in the work of the police officers who carry out these “responsibilities”. Interference that comes from politicians or, as has happened in some cases, that comes “from other departments”.
Nor are “interferences” or “requests for information” admissible by other police departments to the policemen whom the judge or the prosecutor “has commissioned the investigation.” “The police officer responds and reports solely and exclusively to the prosecutor or judge who directs him,” she stressed. “And he must attend only to his orders, and indications. Without interference,” he warned.
Rodriguezin his complaint, assures that the discomfort with Sallent stems, in large part, from their refusal to respond to a request for information. It happened in 2019, when Rodríguez, under the orders of the prosecution, had started an investigation for prevarication against Miquel Buch. The public ministry suspected that Buch had created a position as adviser to the ‘conselleria’ for a sergeant who, in reality, what he did was carry out bodyguard tasks for Carles Puigdemont in Brussels. According to Rodríguez, Sallent wanted to know details that were under summary secrecy and had to request judicial protection in order to continue with the investigation because he feared that he would be removed from the case after refusing to provide the confidential information.
Ariche has also lamented that still, after more than a decade since the deployment of the Mossos, there are no police units attached to the territorial prosecutor’s offices. An “especially” notorious lack in “the provincial prosecutor’s office of Barcelona”, he has reasoned. “It is shocking that there is a unit of the National Police but not of the Mossos.”