Parliament speaker on verge of corruption trial

Parliament speaker, Laura Borràs, is on the verge of facing trial by the Catalan High Court for allegedly awarding irregular contracts when she presided over the Institute of Catalan Letters (ILC) between 2013 and 2017.

The alleged crimes include administrative prevarication, administrative fraud, falsification of a commercial document and misappropriation of public funds.

According to the court's interlocutory statement, Borràs indirectly awarded seven contracts relating to the ILC's website to an acquaintance. The overall value of the contracts was over €132,000, with the court saying "the total amount of each of the fractional contracts and the corresponding invoices of the successful bidders was done according to arbitrary criteria."

Borràs was appointed director of the ILC, a public body in charge of promoting Catalan literature, on January 15, 2013.

Between March 2013 and February 2017, the ILC awarded, "through its director," 18 minor contracts related to its website, for a total value of €330,000, in which Borràs "intervened", "proposing and awarding the contract, approving the expenditure, certifying the execution of the service, issuing the corresponding invoice and finally authorizing the payment."

Of these contracts, six were awarded to Isaías H., for a total of €112,500, and one to Andreu P.M., for €20,050. Both men are also charged.

Shortly have being appointed director of the ILC, Borràs introduced Isaías H. to staff as head of the website. The two exchanged emails about invoices and contracts, concluding that the same vendor could not file invoices for different items in the same year and that they therefore had to "knock on doors" to bill different names and to avoid exceeding the €18,000 maximum for minor contracts.

At the time, public contracts in Catalonia over €18,000 had to be put to tender. The court alleges that Borràs fraudulently split a larger payment into smaller contracts in order to be able to choose who would be awarded the work, and to avoid a public tender process.  

Parliament speaker

Borràs quit her post as head of the Institute of Catalan Letters after winning a seat in the Catalan parliament in the December 2017 election.

A member of former president Carles Puigdemont's Junts per Catalunya party, she was elected parliament speaker in March 2021.

In her opening speech she denounced Spain’s "dirty war" against Catalonia's legislature, and pledged to protect the chamber against any "interference" as well as to "ensure its sovereignty is respected."