Financial liability of ex-government officials involved in independence push reduced

Prosecutors of the Court of Auditors have reduced the alleged financial liability against the 35 former senior Catalan government officials for the organization of the 2017 referendum and foreign action from €9 million to €3.4 million. 

The public prosecutor's office has filed its suit and explains the reduction as the manner of strictly adhering to the facts proven in the Supreme Court's ruling or ascertained and attributable to specific people.

This means that other activities, such as cultural events and trips abroad where the right to self-determination was defended, were left out of the final case. 

The lawsuit filed by prosecutors on Wednesday, which consists of 130 pages and is directed against 35 alleged perpetrators, has two separate parts as it derives from two different procedures with two different liquidation acts. The people involved in each part of the case only partly coincide. 

One side of the suit relates to the expenses of the preparation of the independence referendum on October 1, 2017. The other side accounts for what was spent on foreign action in the buildup to the day of the vote.

Former officials implicated

The lawsuit involves the ex-ministers of the Catalan government already convicted by the Supreme Court for embezzlement: Oriol Junqueras, Raül Romeva, Dolors Bassa and Jordi Turull. They are considered individually liable for the expenses based on the criteria set out in the Supreme Court's ruling. The lawsuit is not against the ex-ministers who were acquitted of embezzlement: Josep Rull, Joaquim Forn, Carles Mundó, Santi Vila, and Meritxell Borràs.

The lawsuit also includes ex-ministers in exile, Lluís Puig and Toni Comín, but does not involve Clara Ponsatí. There is no framework in the case of Puig and Comín as they have not been tried for the acts they have been accused of, but there is a pathway marked out by the Supreme Court ruling of those former officials who have been prosecuted. 

Former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont is charged in the lawsuit in view of his position as head of the government.