The attempt to incriminate lawyer Gonzalo Boye for an offence of money laundering has led to a strong reaction from the lawyer along with four Catalan legal associations. The response has come in the form of a complaint to the Spanish Supreme Court for an offence of concealment of a murder against judge María Tardón, lawyer Ángeles Monedero and the anti-drugs prosecutor Ignacio Miguel de Lucas. Judge Tardón is also charged with a crime of perversion of justice. The complaint, promoted by the legal associations of Osona, Maresme, Tortosa and Tarragona, is backed by 44 lawyers along with Boye himself.
According to the text of the complaint, both judge Tardón and prosecutor Lucas abused their offices to gravely damage the interests of lawyer Boye, who for the last few years has conducted the defence of a significant number of Catalan pro-independence politicians, including Carles Puigdemont. The aim of the justice officials was to prosecute him for offences of falsification and money laundering in relation to drug-trafficking.
These allegations were based on the testimony of a witness in the alleged money laundering case, Andrés Puentes Saavedra, who was released after incriminating Boye. Puentes was thus able to leave prison despite evidence implicating him in the 2018 murder in Colombia of another of those uner investigation, Santiago Quintero Marín.
The prosecutor Lucas reported favourably on Puentes's release from prison - despite the fact that he himself had requested five months ago that Spanish prosecutors be informed of Puentes's "significant involvement" in the murder and despite knowing of the existence of two other criminal cases against this witness.
Finally, in the face of the prosecutor's favourable report, Puentes was released on bail, without the Colombian authorities having been informed of the indications of his participation in a murder that, on the other hand, is competence of the Spanish authorities, given that it was organized in Madrid, and both the victim and the alleged perpetrator lived there.
The plaintiffs allege that for two years neither judge Tardón nor prosecutor Lucas have been interested in investigating the murder. In fact, they are accused of covering it up to protect the person under investigation for the crime, in exchange for seriously harming the interests of Boye.
Assistance from the lawyer
As for the lawyer Ángeles Monedero, she is alleged to have helped the judge and the prosecutor to commit this crime, in addition to "blindly refusing" up to three times to fulfill the obligation, established by law, to certify that she had informed the Colombian authorities of Puentes's involvement in Quintero's murder.
All this, in the opinion of the plaintiffs, would constitute a crime of concealment of murder, with "aggravated personal favour for having worked through abuse of public office."
Tardón accused of perverting justice
They also attribute a crime of perversion of the course of justice against judge Tardón, in her rulings of October 2019 agreeing to the entry and search of Boye's private and professional addresses, as well as December 2019, which lifted the confidentiality on the content of his mobile phone and emails, with a great impact on his personal and professional life.
It is argued in the complaint that these searches were based on Puentes's false statement with the threat, if he did not cooperate, of being sent to Colombia to be investigated for his involvement in the murder.
Arbitrary criminalization
The writ denounces that unjust rulings were issued knowing that they were so, and giving credibility to the statement of a person under investigation for a possible murder, who was released after incriminating the lawyer. All this, despite the fact that the geolocators of the telephones, which are part of the case, totally contradicted the witness's evidence, that meetings at which Boye was alleged to have incriminated himself had taken place in his office.
The complaint alleges that the judge "has arbitrarily criminalized the defence work of lawyer Gonzalo Boye, thereby pursuing enormous personal, professional and reputational harm, and undermined the democratic foundations on which the work of legal defence is based."
Crime of disclosure of secrets
Finally, the document submitted to the Supreme Court also points to a possible offence of disclosure of secrets by the official or public authority, as Tardón illegally accessed data that affect the lawyer's defence work.
At this point, the complaint emphasises the importance of the cases that lawyer Gonzalo Boye has in his hands, such as the defence of former members of the Catalan government now in exile, such as Carles Puigdemont, Toni Comín, Clara Ponsatí and Lluís Puig, which are proceeding in Belgium, before the EU Court of Justice and in the Spanish Supreme Court itself.
"Like Turkey"
In a statement, the Catalan legal associations' body, Coordinadora de la Abogacía de Catalunya, recalls that the right to legal defence is recognized in the Spanish Constitution as a fundamental right, as well as in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and international treaties.
"Consequently, we lawyers have to practice the profession freely and independently," they claim, while warning that today the person who is under attack is Boye, "who has been charged despite a complete lack of evidence, just as has been occurring in Turkey, where more than 1,500 defence lawyers with political backgrounds have been prosecuted in the last 5 years, by linking them with terrorist groups."
Above, the press release by the Coordinadora de l'Advocacia de Catalunya
In the main image, Gonzalo Boye in an archive image / Sergi Alcàzar.