The La Caixa Foundation has requested this Wednesday to the judge instructing the ‘Voloh case’, Joaquin Aguirreexercise as a private prosecutor in the investigation into the operation of ‘Villa Bugatti’a farm in Cabrera de Mar (Barcelona) in which it is suspected that the ‘exconseller’ of ERC Xavier Vendrell He obtained a deal in favor of the city council and the Generalitat to achieve an urban reclassification that doubled its value, as confirmed by knowledgeable sources.
The request from the foundation of the financial entity to appear as an accusation comes only 24 hours after the deputy director general of the La Caixa Foundation, Esther Planasmake sure before the judge that it was the Department of Vice President and Economywhen it was directed by the current president of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonesthe one who proposed to finance said operation with social work funds, which is suspected of leading to an urban development ‘pitch’.
Planas was summoned to testify as a witness as a result of a report from the Civil Guard that indicates that the Generalitat was able to pay for the alleged ‘punch’ through the El Brot pedagogical foundationa project that would be carried out on the ‘Villa Bugatti’ estate, which, once reclassified, would pass into the hands of a company managed by Vendrell.
Collaboration agreement
In his statement before the judge, the directive of the La Caixa Foundation He explained that it was Economy, a ‘conselleria’ controlled by ERC between 2017 and 2019, the years in which El Brot was financed, which made the proposal of the entities and projects that should be subsidized. The recipient entities of these funds, between 200 and 300 a year, were subsidized under a collaboration framework agreement signed by the La Caixa Foundation and the Department of the Vice Presidency of the Generalitat.
Subsequently, a commission made up of the then general director of the foundation and current ‘conseller’ of Economy, James Giroand by the Secretary General of Economy (Aragonès in 2017 and Albert Castellanos in 2018 and 2019) met several times a year to monitor the subsidized projects.
According to the witness, the La Caixa Foundation trusted the good faith of the Generalitat when proposing the projects that deserved to be financed through the social work and it was limited to examining that these and the entities that promoted them were adapted to the purposes foreseen in the framework agreement for the granting of subsidies.
In the case of El Brot Foundationdedicated to the educational integration of children with learning difficulties, Planas added that the project was indeed suited to the purposes set forth in the aid from La Caixa’s social work, without it being able to foresee the urban reorganization later that Vendrell intended.
possible embezzlement
The report of the Civil Guard is based on the documentation seized in the framework of the ‘operation Voloh’in October 2020, in which businessmen and former CDC and ERC officials who were part of the so-called “general staff of the ‘procés'” who organized 1-O, including Vendrell.
The armed institute maintains that there are indications of a embezzlement crime in the operation of ‘Villa Bugatti’, since with the subsidies granted by the Generalitat charged to the La Caixa Foundation’s social work funds, Vendrell was able to pay for the urbanistic ‘punch’ through the educational foundation El Brot.
That foundation, adds the Civil Guard, would use the funds from La Caixa for the “processing, execution and implementation of a educational activity“in the farm that, once requalified, would pass into the hands of the mercantile Maresme Futuremanaged by Vendrell.
150,000 euros under suspicion
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According to the armed institute, the El Brot Foundation initially obtained €850,000 between 2017 and 2019 in aid from the La Caixa Foundation, of which €149,718 they could have been used for “different purposes” to which they were awarded. In any case, in those three years the entity received only a third of what was initially agreed, €232,000according to the accredited delivery of the invoices.
For the Civil Guard, the funds benefited Maresme Future Y Bauleer Serveis i Promoció -linked to Vendrell-, for which the El Brot Foundation was “used” as a “instrument” to finance activities of both mercantile related to the supposed ‘pitch’ of Villa Bugatti, in which “activities unrelated to the educational project” for children with learning difficulties were included.