Supreme Court rejects amnesty for embezzlement from Catalan leaders

Madrid., The Spanish Supreme Court decided not to apply the general amnesty law for the crime of embezzlement of public funds, meaning that prominent leaders of the Catalan independence movement, such as former vice president Oriol Junqueras and potentially former president Carles Puigdemont, will not benefit from the amnesty measure. funny. The decision of the Chamber of the judicial body is accompanied by extensive reasoning in which they defend their jurisdiction in the application of the controversial law.

The amnesty law was approved last November in the Congress of Deputies as part of an agreement between the parties in government, the PSOE and the Sumar coalition, with the independentists of Junts per Catalunya (JxCat), who demanded it in exchange of their parliamentary support to carry out the investiture of Pedro Sánchez as president of the government.

The law sought to exonerate the leaders and activists of the Catalan independence movement from all criminal responsibilities for their participation in the failed unilateral declaration of independence in October 2017, among whom, according to the Spanish courts, had committed crimes such as sedition, disobedience, , public disorders, prevarication, attacks against authority and even some acts of low-intensity “terrorism.”

The crime of embezzlement of public money was also foreseen, but with the exception that it was limited by European legislation, which is precisely the argument of the Supreme Court judges for not applying the law in some cases and that mainly affect the main leaders. of the Catalan independence movement.

In their order, the magistrates maintain that “to request that this Chamber interpret the Amnesty Law without any other reference than that provided by the will of the legislator is to ask that we abdicate our role as judges. Political will is not enough to amnesty an event.

It is necessary that the legal text that translates this ideology defines its objective scope with the reinforced precision that is required of a norm that is going to produce such radical effects on structural principles of the criminal process”, in addition to maintaining that “the legislator excluded from the amnesty those crimes of embezzlement in which the purpose of personal enrichment of a financial nature had been mediated.

And he did so by invoking the guidelines of the opinion of the Venice Commission which, in no way, imposed this requirement, to the extent that it only suggested a more reinforced causal link between the amnestiable acts and the purpose with which those crimes had been committed. ”.

With which – they conclude – “the finally approved text of the Amnesty Law reflects the unequivocal supervening will of the legislator to set restrictions on the projection of the amnesty with respect to the crime of embezzlement, in contrast to the initial will to make the application unlimited. of the law to all acts that squander public funds.”

The pro-independence leaders directly affected by this resolution are former vice president Junqueras, former councilors Raül Romeva, Dolors Bassa and Jordi Turull, and indirectly former president Puigdemont, who still has an international search and arrest warrant precisely for a crime of embezzlement. .