The Prosecutor's Office maintains the request for a prison sentence for the eldest son of the Pujols and the rest of the accused

San Fernando de Henares"It was a scandal, I had to change my profession, I could no longer do promotions." This is how businessman Alejandro Guerrero, one of the nine on trial, has summarized the impact of the Pujol case on his work. "If you are charged in a money laundering case, banks won't finance you," he added. He said this at the start of the last week of the trial, which is scheduled to conclude on Thursday. This Monday, the four businessmen who were pending from ten days ago testified. Taking advantage of the last question of his lawyer Ana Beranaola's interrogation, Alejandro Guerrero also made it clear that the businessman did not receive a single euro from the Generalitat de Catalunya: "Never in my life have I had any contract for anything with the public administration. I have never applied for any tender." Jordi Pujol Ferrusola acted as an intermediary for him to buy some land in Plaza Europa in L'Hospitalet. Prosecutor Fernando Bermejo has long been trying to mix in the reform of the Gran Via – which was indeed a public work – but it was five years earlier: "It's not my concern and I didn't have the remotest idea."

When the statements have concluded, prosecutor Fernando Bermejo has announced that he maintains the prison sentence requests that the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office initially requested. These are 29 years for Jordi Pujol Ferrusola, 17 years for Mercè Gironès – his ex-wife –, 14 years for Josep Pujol, 8 years for his siblings and 5 years for the nine businessmen. The State Attorney's Office, which accuses the firstborn, his ex-wife, Josep Pujol and the businessmen, has also maintained the requests. The majority of the defenses have also submitted a request for the hypothetical sentence to be reduced in accordance with the mitigating factor of undue delays. This is applied when a case is delayed "extraordinarily" for reasons unrelated to the accused. Likewise, the president of the court, José Ricardo de Prada, has announced that the chamber will soon issue an interlocutory order to formally close the case against the former president of the Generalitat.

Luis Delso, a businessman "not aligned" with Convergència

The second defendant to testify was Luis Delso, who was president of Isolux Corsán. When questioned by his lawyer, Óscar Morales made it clear that he has never had the right to vote in Catalonia and that he is not "aligned" with Convergència, an element of which –generically and abstractly– the Prosecutor's Office accuses the nine businessmen. "I never thought that friendship was a criminal offense," he replied to prosecutor Fernando Bermejo when asked if he was a friend of the eldest son of the former president of the Generalitat. He also recounted that Jordi Pujol Ferrusola "influenced" the governor of Nuevo León (Mexico) to receive him to discuss the construction of a highway –it was a contract that had already been awarded to them– and one day he offered him to have breakfast or lunch with the president of Paraguay. And he defended the role of intermediaries, even though they are "demonized" in Spain.

However, the most tense part of the interrogation was the questions from the State's legal representation, who questioned him with some belligerence. "Look carefully at the documentation before making a statement that does not correspond to reality," Óscar Morales reproached Álvaro Bazán, who had minimized Jordi Pujol Ferrusola's involvement in an operation in Gabon. The businessman recalled a letter between a minister and the firstborn. Previously, José Ignacio Ocio had opened the interrogation with a threatening tone: "If I had been present during the investigation, perhaps certain people from FCC [a Barcelona-based company] would be sitting here in your situation."

The firstborn as intermediary

The two businessmen have spoken about the work that Jordi Pujol Ferrusola did. "He came [to tell me], as he has come to me with many more projects, because he moved very well," recalled Luis Delso. "In the business world, there are thousands and thousands of operations where you don't just pass little papers back and forth," he said about the absence of documentation for certain operations. Josep Cornadó, from COPISA, explained the same about the eldest son's involvement: "He had a lot of information, he was informed not only about Catalonia, but everywhere, you've seen the character," he summarized.

Alejandro Guerrero argued that in a project in Ibiza, Jordi Pujol Ferrusola interceded with investors who contributed 25 of the 30 million for the operation: "In no way would I have known them if it hadn't been with him," he pointed out. He presented him as a "person who knows a lot of people" and mentioned that he even presented him with 24 projects. "The key to everything is that you are introduced to whoever owns the land, finding good products was extremely complicated," he added.

They also spoke about the public contracts the company received. Their "main client" was the Ministry of Public Works, and with the Generalitat de Catalunya, which was the second, they received "many more" contracts with the PSC in Plaça Sant Jaume than with Convergència. "When we had more power was with the tripartite government," he emphasized. And he pointed out that they also received contracts from the governments of Madrid and Andalusia. Luis Delso highlighted that Isolux received 881 million between 2000 and 2010. Of the total, only 92 million were from the Government with Jordi Pujol, 10%. "All the important contracts were from the Tripartite era," he reiterated.

Donations to the Albert Pascual Foundation

Another issue that prosecutor Fernando Bermejo has always stirred up has been the donations from companies to the Albert Pascual Foundation. All businessmen have indicated that they did so at the request of Jordi Pujol Ferrusola to help finance the rugby section of Barça. In the case of COPISA, which had built the stadium for Santboiana, Espanyol, or Joventut, they were interested in "being in contact" with Barça with the aim of getting the Camp Nou remodeled, and they were close: "There was a relationship and the information we had was that we were awarded the contract until a Turkish company [Limak] appeared," he lamented.