The head of Culture declares that a ship conditioned for the unilateral referendum was later used for elections and for services related to the coronavirus pandemic
The ‘consellera’ Natalia Garriga argued this Monday before the judge of the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC), Maria Eugènia Alegret, investigating him for the organization of the unilateral 1-0 referendum that was not warned in person by the Constitutional Court that he could not carry out actions vetoed in its resolutions in relation to the sovereign referendum. The prosecution understands that there are indications that the high position of the Catalan Executive committed a crime of serious disobedience for “disregarding” the mandates of the high court when she was director of services of the general secretary of the Department of the Vice President, although in her indictment, issued before it was appraised by the Court of Instruction number 13, also includes the crime of embezzlement. The State Attorney has also expressed the same opinion. However, it is still possible that she will be tried for embezzlement because Vox exercises popular prosecution.
The ‘consellera’ appeared at the headquarters of the TSJC enraptured by deputies from Junts, ERC and the CUP, in addition to the president of the Parliament, Laura Borrás, and several members of the Catalan Government. Garriga, who has been notified of her prosecution, has only responded to questions from her lawyer, Laura Palmés, so the investigation lasted about 15 minutes.
In this statement, the ‘consellera’ affirmed that the ship conditioned in the CTTI (Telecommunications Center of the Generalitat) before the unilateral referendum it was subsequently used in elections and during the coronavirus pandemic for 061 and tracers, thus justifying the 70,000 euros allocated to these facilities. His interrogation dealt with this matter and whether he had received any personal notification from the TR about the impediment to promote secessionist actions. In this sense, the head of the Department of Culture rejected that the high court communicated anything to him. For this reason, her lawyer has requested that the Constitutional Court be required if that is the case.
The detention
The ‘consellera’ was arrested on September 20, 2017, in the operation ordered by the Investigating Court number 13 of Barcelona to abort the logistics of the 1-O that gave rise to the search of the headquarters of the Department of Vice Presidency and Economy, directed by Oriol Junqueras and where the councilor acted as director of services. Subsequently, she was prosecuted for participating in the preparations for the unilateral referendum that suspended the TC, mainly as a result of her efforts to obtain a place to store electoral material and set up a voting data collection center. When she was elected in the last elections, the case passed into the hands of the TSJC due to her appraisal.
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garriga was prosecuted for her role in the award of several minor contracts to set up a call center that had to collect the data from 1-O, for his efforts to obtain a place to store the electoral material and facilitate access to the referendum website, as well as for attending an act of the Vice Presidency in favor of the query. However, according to the prosecution, the TSJC judge herself who prosecuted Josep Maria Jové on 1-O has already ruled out that the expenses destined for the conditioning of the aforementioned center constituted a crime of embezzlement of public funds, given that it was later used for legal proceedings. legal electoral and other activities.
The prosecution also accuses the councilor of acting as a “liaison” between Jové and another of those processed by the 1-O to obtain a place to store the electoral material of the referendum and of “transmitting instructions” for the transfer of some warehouses from Bigues i Riells (Barcelona). According to the Public Prosecutor’s Office, he also took steps to make the referendum website accessible to anyone and attended an event in April 2017, organized by the Department of the Vice Presidency, “with which it was intended to convey to the public the commitment to the members and other senior officials of the Government with the illegal referendum that was going to be called shortly”.