Carles Puigdemont's defence, headed by lawyer Gonzalo Boye, has filed an appeal against the judicial order in which investigating judge Pablo Llarena maintains the Catalan president in exile's prosecution for the crimes of disobedience and embezzlement. Boye denounces the violation of the right to the judge predetermined by law, questions Llarena's impartiality, charges against the application of the abolition of the crime of sedition, against the new charges imposed on his defendant and denounces that the national arrest warrant against Puigdemont is still in force despite his immunity as an MEP.
In the 131-page appeal for reform, the lawyer charges against judge Pablo Llarena's decree who, in view of the repeal of the crime of sedition, maintains the prosecution of the Catalan president in exile for the crimes of disobedience and embezzlement. The lawyer once again called for the judge to submit to a series of preliminary questions before the Court of Luxembourg.
Embezzlement and persecution
In the appeal, Gonzalo Boye is also very critical of how the judge "has modified the facts of the accusation" to charge Puigdemont for aggravated embezzlement. In addition, he assures that he deviates from what his colleagues of the Spanish Supreme Court stated in the Catalan pro-independence movement ruling, in which four of the political prisoners were convicted of embezzlement not for profit, but for disloyal administration, which before the reform was in the same article of the crime of embezzlement. "This change in the facts and the instructor judge's subsumption only aims, if authorized by the CJEU, to issue a fourth European arrest warrant, ticking the corruption box; a box that has not been able to confuse the executing authorities on any of the three previous occasions; and neither will it succeed in a fourth attempt", maintains Boye.
The lawyer details that Llarena's note "is discredited" by the Spanish Court of Accounts, which has an open procedure on the expenses of the October 1st actions and foreign promotion, in which there is "a control of every single euro, and their corresponding cents, of where they were destined", and dismantles the judge's reasoning when he states there was an extraction of funds "from public control", since —Boye adds— "this is the total opposite of what happened in this case".
For all these reasons, the criminal attorney assures that Judge Llarena carries out a "constant and serious mutation of the subsumed facts according to a persecutory intent unworthy of any court in a democratic state governed by the rule of law".
He is not the competent judge
In the document, the criminal attorney insists to Judge Llarena that "he is not the competent judge" to investigate Puigdemont, Toni Comín and Clara Ponsatí's case because they are MEPs and investigating them does not fall within the Spanish Supreme Court's competence. And if he has any doubts, he suggests that he should ask the CJEU, in one of the new preliminary rulings, to clarify this. In addition, he reminds him that if he is not competent to investigate Catalan politicians in exile, neither is he competent to make the new prosecution judicial decree, and asks him to place the case on June 13th 2019 and send it to the Barcelona courts.
Boye also reminds Judge Llarena that he should have refrained from investigating the Catalan case because he was awarded a prize by the Villacisneros Foundation, "a pro-Spain organization", for having worked "for the unity and strengthening of Spain".