FORMER Catalan President Artur Mas has been ordered to pay more than €5 million (£4.4m) to cover the costs of the non-binding referendum on independence that his government organised in November 2014.
Spain’s Court of Auditors told his lawyers in Madrid yesterday that Mas must pay €4.8m (£4.2m) with interest of €400,000 (£352,000) to cover expenses of the ballot that the Constitutional Court declared illegal.
Former ministers Irene Rigau, Joana Ortega and Francesc Homs, along with six other officials, were also caught up in the investigation but as president at the time, Mas is ultimately responsible. All the former officials have 15 days to deposit the money before their personal assets are frozen.
The investigation by the Court of Auditors, a Spanish government agency, began in July after two anti-independence organisations filed a lawsuit supported by Spain’s attorney general.
In response to yesterday’s decision, Jordi Sanchez, head of the pro-indy Catalan National Assembly, tweeted the numbers of two bank accounts set up to collect funds to pay the referendum bill and expenses of those taken to court over the referendum.
In other developments, officers from Spain’s civil guard raided more than 30 town halls in western and northern Catalonia on the hunt for referendum documents.
The police asked city government employees for documents or emails that some mayors signed supporting the ballot, or correspondence in which local authorities had offered local buildings as polling stations. Josep Ramon Ibarz, mayor of Almacelles, who was in court last week, insisted they were not committing any crime.
“Maybe before asking to go to court last Friday they should have asked for these documents,” he said.
Elsewhere, Jose Manuel Maza, Spain’s attorney general, has warned that Catalan President Carles Puigdemont could be facing arrest.
In a radio interview, Maza said: “Legally the conditions exist that would make it possible to ask for an arrest, particularly for the misuse of public funds, since a cautionary detention can take place if the crime in question carries prison time.”
Puigdemont has admitted that he would “not like” being arrested but said not even the threat of it would stop his determination to hold the vote. Maza also threatened legal consequences if the Catalan police chief, Josep Lluis Trapero, did not obey orders for his force to be co- ordinated from Madrid. It followed moves that would see Catalonia’s police force, the Mossos d’Esquadra being managed by the Spanish Ministry of Home Affairs.
Trapero’s handling of the Barcelona terrorist attacks has made him something of a local hero and he immed-iately said he would refuse the order to relinquish control of the Mossos.
However, Maza said the Catalan police did not have enough resources to respond on polling day, and that police forces needed to co-ordinate in case “there are ballot boxes” on Sunday.
He said: “The Mossos do not have enough resources to guarantee security and calm everywhere.”
A Catalan journalist and radio news anchor is facing legal action from the Union of Guardia Civil Officers over allegations that she endangered police operations by asking listeners to report on anti-referendum raids. The union claimed Monica Terribas – who presents the morning daily news programme on Catalan public radio – had distributed messages “implicitly encouraging disorderly conduct”.
Its statement read: “It is unfor- tunate that the paranoid drift of some media reach the point of being useful for terrorists, drug traffickers or any other delinquent, thus facilitating the possible committing of crimes with unpredictable consequences.”
Politicians and colleagues rallied to support Terribas. Catalan presidency minister Jordi Turull tweeted: “All my support for Monica Terribas,” adding that the state had “lost its head”.
As students defied Spain and distributed up to a million referendum ballots at the University of Barcelona, and a demonstration was held outside the Spanish Consulate in Edinburgh, 14 people were summoned to Spanish police stations accused of cloning Catalan Government websites giving information about the referendum.
All are being investigated for disobedience after the Spanish government shut down the original website. Four of those arrested, from the northern Catalan city of Girona and Tarragona, in the south, exercised their right to remain silent and were released. The other 10, from Barcelona, have refused to testify.
Jordi Puignero, the Catalan Government’s Secretary of Telecom- munications, Cybersecurity and Digital Society, has written to the European Commissioner of the digital single market, Andrus Ansip, denouncing the “ongoing unlawful repression” of Catalan autonomy institutions by Spain.
In the letter, Puignero called on the EC to perform its role as “the ultimate guardian of the open and free internet”, which, he said “is truly at stake right now”.
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