No to everything. Spain's public auditing tribunal, the Court of Accounts has dismissed the last two appeals made by lawyers for the 35 former officials of the Catalan governments of Artur Mas and Carles Puigdemont, from whom the tribunal is demanding 5.3 million euros, through the private prosecution of Societat Civil Catalana (SCC), reduced to 3.2 million euros by the public prosecutor's office, for the public spending on the 1st October 2017 independence referendum and the promotion of Catalonia abroad from 2011 to 2017. In the previous hearing, on December 16th, Elena Hernáez, the councillor hearing the case - those officiating over Court of Account cases are not judges - had already verbally rejected the suspension of the Catalan case, despite the fact that defence lawyers insisted that the Catalan government had not been harmed by the actions taken. And the councillor stated that she would resolve two procedural claims in writing, which she finally rejected in a resolution on December 22nd, to which ElNacional.cat has had access. The lawyers of the majority of the ERC party co-defendants, from the Vallbé law firm, have now announced that they will file an appeal considering that their clients' rights were violated. The lawyer Francesc Homs, who represents defendants from Junts, is to do the same for expenses from the earlier unofficial referendum held on 9th November, 2014, which the tribunal has now claimed. They are smaller amounts, but the "principle of legal security" must be asserted and the case must also be appealed "out of decency", the former Catalan minister told this newspaper, because the Artur Mas government was already punished by the same Court of Accounts on 2019 for having held the 2014 vote.
Specifically, the first assertion of the defendants is that they cannot be tried twice for the same actions - under criminal charges and by the accounting tribunal - with reference to the 30 people being prosecuted criminally in the Barcelona court number 13 for the organization of Catalonia's self-determination referendum. And as an alternative argument, in the event of the rejection of their demand for the case to be closed, it was requested that the Court of Accounts call on the Barcelona court to drop its civil claim because it is a "duplicate bail bond" across the two court procedures, as explained by lawyer Àngel Fernández, defender of Josep Ginesta, in an argument which other lawyers also seconded.
The second request, made by the lawyer and former Catalan government minister Francesc Homs, was to drop the claim for expenses relating to 9th November 2014 because the Court of Accounts itself had already convicted president Artur Mas and members of his government, including Homs, for this same action. They were ordered to repay 4.9 million euros into the public coffers. Now, the auditing want seeks to have them pay four amounts that add up to 3,004 euros, for the receipt of foreign votes from the offices in Germany, France and for a presentation. The Court of Accounts councillor did not accept either of the two requests, and nor did she agree that the principle of non bis in idem - the avoidance of double jeopardy - had been breached, an argument presented by Gonzalo Boye, lawyer of Catalan president Carles Puigdemont, whose testimony the councillor has agreed to hear in the trial, as a witness for other defendants.
The priority is criminal prosecution
In the resolution, 15 pages long, the councillor explains that the actions were "governed by the general rule of compatibility between the criminal jurisdiction and accounting jurisdiction", according to current regulations and that the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court allows two procedures on the same actions to be investigated in both jurisdictions, without "the accounting jurisdiction having to wait for the declaration of proven facts to be formulated in the criminal process". She adds that the Court of Accounts would only have a limitation if the criminal jurisdiction had already made a firm pronouncement, which does not happen in the Catalan case because the criminal procedure is still awaiting trial.
The councilor also rules out the suggested request to the judge of the Barcelona court number 13, that she give way to the Court of Accounts with regard to the civil liability of the 1st October, for the amounts claimed and already deposited. The resolution argues that criminal jurisdiction "is always preferred", according to the Law of the Judiciary and, therefore, she cannot make this request, in addition to insisting that "there is no violation of the non bis in idem principle". However, she admits that in the case of criminal convictions already given, action would have to be taken "in order to avoid duplication of payments, which if they had occured would indeed violate this right".
The reality is that 5.8 million euros have been deposited in a judicial account, by order of the Barcelona court number 13, since 2019, while the Court of Accounts has received 1.2 million euros for the claimed expenses of the 1st October vote. Furthermore, the alleged public spending by the Catalan foreign ministry, estimated at 2.2 million euros, has been covered with guarantees from the Catalan Institute of Finance (ICF) and when this was received the Court return money contributed by ERC.
The 2014 sentence reinterpreted
With regard to the claim of res iudicata for the unofficial independence vote on 9th November 2014, the Court of Accounts councillor interpreted that the earlier conviction made by the Court of Accounts for that referendum was not for the consultation as a whole, but for specific expenses and now, as some expenses not included previously have been claimed, they can be demanded in the current procedure, explained a surprised Francesc Homs. The Court of Accounts did not end the seizure of property of former Catalan president Mas and former ministers Irene Rigau, Joana Ortega and Francesc Homs until February 2022.