BarcelonaCarles Puigdemont’s lawyer, Gonzalo Boye, has been sitting in the dock since Monday alongside the historic Galician narco Sito Miñanco for an alleged money laundering crime related to drug trafficking. The National Court is now starting to judge a case that dates back to 2017, when the police confiscated 889,620 euros at Barajas airport from members of the Miñanco gang, a client of Boye, when they were trying to pass them to Colombia. Boye defends his innocence and says he is being persecuted for his work as a lawyer and for his links with independence.
Sign up for the Politics newsletter
A look at the baubles of power
Sign up for it
According to the judicial investigation, Boye and two other lawyers falsified documents to justify that this money had a legal origin and that it could return to the hands of Miñanco. The Prosecutor’s Office is asking for Puigdemont’s lawyer 9 years and 9 months in prison and a fine of 2.7 million euros. The lawyer denies that he falsified anything and emphasizes that he limited himself to presenting to Sepblac, the money laundering prevention authority, some contracts that would certify that the money belonged to businessman Manuel González Rubio and that it came from a business with a security company in Colombia. The businessman now subscribes to this version, although he had previously linked the money to the narco.
The contracts, under a magnifying glass
The prosecution’s thesis, however, is different. The public ministry maintains that Miñanco, who at the time was in the third degree after spending almost 17 years in prison, never left drug trafficking and had no intention of rehabilitating. While working in a car park in Algeciras, the Galician reactivated his drug business and set up a whole fraudulent corporate structure to hide the profits. After the arrest of his collaborators in Barajas, Miñanco’s legal team, led by Boye, would have fabricated sales contracts that, according to the prosecutor, made no economic sense. The lawyers already received an administrative sanction for these facts.
Miñanco now faces a prison sentence of 31 years and 6 months in prison. The National Court is investigating him and about 45 other people for the so-called Mito operation, a network through which the Galician narco wanted to introduce 4,000 kilos of cocaine into Spain, but which did not succeed because the police prevented
Boye sees persecution in it
In an interview with VilawebBoye has linked the prosecutor’s and police’s moves to implicate him in the case with his ties to Puigdemont. “It is clear that there are people who believe that with my head they can condition other people. Don’t be confused. Don’t be confused, I will not be a hostage to anyone. And I say this because I will not allow my situation to be negotiated in change of political concessions”, he defended. Boye’s office has also reported that, during a search of his office in 2019, investigators intercepted correspondence he has maintained with his clients over the past nine years, violating his right to defense and professional secrecy. Boye has another ace up his sleeve: he has presented evidence in which the lawyer for another of the defendants, Manuel Puentes Saavedra, acknowledges that his client framed him during cross-examination after being pressured while in prison.
On the eve of the trial, Puigdemont has come out in defense of his lawyer and, in fact, has called on everyone who can support him in the face of an accusation in which he sees the hand of the State sewers. “All this rot emits a suffocating stench. Shameless manipulation to make him pay for the failures of Spanish repression in Europe, and to have him as a hostage,” lamented X.
Junts’ general manager will travel this Monday to the National Court to accompany Boye, who was also Quim Torra’s lawyer. There will be the general secretary Jordi Turull, the vice-president and spokesman, Josep Rius, the president of Junts al Parlament, Albert Batet, and the speakers in Congress and the Senate, Míriam Nogueras and Eduard Pujol. It is the second time that the lawyer will be tried in the National Court: the first time was in 1996, when the court sentenced him to 14 years in prison (he eventually served six) for collaboration with ETA in the kidnapping of the Spanish industrialist Emiliano Revilla.
the calendar
The trial at the National Court starts this Monday with the unknown whether the court could suspend it, given that one of the defendants is in prison in Senegal and will not be able to go there. Two of the 48 defendants have died before the trial, which is expected to last until the end of January if there are no unforeseen circumstances.
