A heavy blow against the Volhov case. The Barcelona Audience has overturned the extension of the investigation being carried out by Barcelona judge Joaquín Aguirre, in the so-called Volhov case, which was initially opened to look into alleged illegal financing of the Catalan independence movement. The provincial high court orders the judge to either shelve the investigation or send it to trial, but only with respect to the investigation carried out until August 1st, 2023, according to the resolution released by the Catalan High Court (TSJC) press office this Tuesday afternoon. This means that the judge in the Volhov case will no longer be able to pursue the Catalan president-in-exile Carles Puigdemont, as he has been doing up till now in an indirect way (because Puigdemont, as an MEP, could not be directly probed by lower-court cases). Judge Aguire's focus on the Catalan politician was through the second part of the Volhov case, which he declared secret in March, allegedly to investigate "Russian interference in the independence process of Catalonia", aiming to find evidence that Puigdemont could have committed a crime of high treason - a crime not covered by the amnesty law - which would then have permitted him to pass the case against Puigdemont to the Supreme Court in order to prosecute him. This intention has now been made more difficult, although it could still happen.
Judge's "generic" extension of case rejected
In a strongly-worded resolution, a chamber of the Barcelona Audience affirms that the judge did nothing on the case in the previous six months, between January and August 2023, and for that reason an extension of part two of the Volhov case was not justified. The court explained that the second part was opened after finding audio on the mobile phone of Víctor Terradellas, former office holder in the Convergència (CDC) political party, but that later the judge considered this evidence "instrumental" for other sections of the case, for which police reports were sought. "Generic approaches cannot be used to justify the extensions," said the Barcelona Audience with regard to judge Aguirre's extension to part two and other sections of the Volhov case, last summer. The higher court specifies that the latest police reports are from January 2023, "sufficient time" in the opinion of the court to have studied the case, and in addition, it reproaches the judge for failing to detail any specific investigation that was pending, as he is required to do by law.
In fact, the Volhov case was reactivated coinciding with the political agreements reached between the Spanish Socialists (PSOE) and the Catalan independentists of Junts and ERC, pushing forward the amnesty law, now definitively approved. The same thing happened with the Democratic Tsunami case, where judge Manuel García-Castellón reactivated the case late last year and for the first time called for testimonies from those investigated, and surprisingly, he included president Puigdemont in the list and accused all those involved of the crime of terrorism, while the public prosecutors, by contrast, argued that the Tsunami protests could at most be pursued as offences of public disorder. Most of the 12 people investigated in the Tsunami case were, in fact, arrested in the Volhov case and the National Audience judge asked his colleague in Barcelona to elevate this investigation to the higher criminal court.
Those investigated in the Volhov case
In October 2020, in a high-profile Civil Guard action, judge Aguirre ordered the arrest of around 20 businesspeople and political officials in the Volhov case. It was all based on some audios that Víctor Terradellas, the former Convergència official, had on his mobile phone, when he was arrested over alleged funding irregularities in the Diputació subsidies case, open since 2016. In these audios, he told ex-Catalan minister Xavier Vendrell (ERC), and the businessperson and former Convergència politician, David Madí, in separate conversations that president Puigdemont had "shat his pants" when the Russians offered him 10,000 soldiers in the autumn of 2017 to declare the independence of Catalonia. During this time, Madí testified before the judge, and several cases of influence peddling investigated ended up being closed due to lack of evidence. And the same occurred recently with regard to Vendrell.
In addition, the head of president Puigdemont's office, Josep Lluís Alay, was investigated, and as well as linking him to an alleged Russian plot, the judge also sent him to trial together with two Mossos officers for asking them if he was in the police search system. Also present in the investigations is the businessperson Oriol Soler and computer scientist Jaume Cabaní, who like Alay are accused in the Tsunami case. Nothing specific is attributed to any of them in the alleged Russian plot.
In addition, the Civil Guard found no evidence of the diversion of public funds to cover the cost of the exile of president Carles Puigdemont and former councilors through the company Iniciatives Events, according to the new report that it delivered to the judge in the Volhov case, in February. The people in charge of the firm, Roc Aguilera and Antoni Fusté, were arrested on October 28th, 2020, as part of the Volhov case, and since then they have not been summoned to testify as investigated. Judge Aguirre's assertions that there were signs of "systematic and continuous" misuse of public funds has finally, more than three years later, been rejected by the report which found some unclear administrative aspects but no criminal irregularities.
Villa Bugatti, also stopped
In another resolution, the Barcelona Audience also took the same action with the Villa Bugatti part of the Volhov case; that is, it stopped the investigation that had been pursued up till August 2023 and ordered judge Aguirre to either close the case or send it to trial if he considered that there were indication of crime, in a case centred on the construction of a school in the Villa Bugatti estate in the town of Cabrera de Mar, with the arrest of the mayor and a councillor from the ERC party. Finally, in a third resolution, the court did not accept the recusal of judge Aguirre, which had been requested by Gonzalo Boye, lawyer for president Puigdemont and his office director Josep Lluís Alay.
Now, judge Aguirre has to decide whether to close the Volhov Part Two section of the case as well as that of Villa Bugatti, or send one or both of them to trial, and anticorruption prosecutors will have to decide whether or not to charge those under investigation.