The State Attorney’s Office follows the criteria that it set before the Supreme Court with the leaders of the ‘procés’ and requests a sentence much lower than that proposed by the prosecution for the ERC deputy and former government official Josep Maria Jovéwho understands that it should be condemned for his participation in the 1-O three and a half years in jail for disobedience and the type of attenuated embezzlement included in the reform of the Penal Code.
But the surprise of the indictment of the State Legal Services is that it does not request any penalty for the president of the Port of Barcelona, Lluis Salvadodespite the fact that the public prosecutor asks for him practically the same penalty as for Jové: for him he proposes seven years in prison and for the previous one, six years in prison, while the Lawyer does not request any penalty for him. For Natalia Garriga requests a fine of 30,000 euros for a crime of disobedience.
In his 34-page letter to which EL PERIÓDICO DE CATALUNYA has had access, he explains that after the Catalan elections of September 2015, Jove and Garriga High officials of the Department of the Vice Presidency and the Economy and Treasury were appointed. Both “in the scope of their respective powers, carried out a series of actions, aimed at the preparation and execution of the self-determination referendum, outside the constitutional, statutory and legal channels.”
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Jové, as general secretary of the department, was in charge not only of budget issues, but also of electoral processes and popular consultations. For her part, Garriga was the Director of Services. The two “in their own functional scope, disregarded what was ordered by the Constitutional Courteither by carrying out acts, or by omitting their duty to prevent or paralyze certain actions”. And this despite the individual warnings that the guarantee body addressed to them to prevent the acts already declared unconstitutional and that had been suspended .
According to the State Attorney’s Office, despite this, Garriga “did not issue any instructions to prevent the operation of referendum.cat website whose objective was to promote and facilitate the holding of the referendum, and collaborated to ensure the availability of places for voting”. And Jové “did not forbid the use of public places, did not paralyze the distribution of notifications of the appointments of the members of the polling stations and of the census cards, or the diffusion of institutional advertisingl to promote participation in the referendum”.
In fact, the Constitutional imposed a daily coercive fine of 12,000 euros until it justified “having revoked any resolution issued for the preparation, execution and/or promotion of the illegal referendum”, the “closure of the content of the referendum web page” and any other intended for the same purpose, as well as any other instrument of dissemination of the referendum on social networks” and “the cessation of all collaboration in the institutional campaign of the illegal referendum& rdquor ;.
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The document accuses Jové of hiring Unipost to distribute 56,000 certified letters with the appointment of posts at polling stations, and 5,346,734 ordinary envelopes with census cards in order to carry out the referendum for 979,661 euros, payment that was divided with the Departments of the Presidency, Culture, Health, and Labor. The Lawyers consider it “a ruse” that the invoices were canceled and she recalls that the company interrupted its work due to the Civil Guard breaking into its headquarters.
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Jové, according to the State Attorney’s Office, was also in charge of using the contingency fund 3,430,000 euros for an institutional advertising campaign, called Civismewhose purpose was to disseminate and publicize the referendum, in September 2017. It did not materialize due to the resignation of the two winning companies.
The Legal Services of the State do not request that he return the money allegedly defrauded, because it understands that this will be clarified in the procedure for accounting responsibility that is followed before the Court of Auditors.