Joan Piqué Vidal dies, the corrupt lawyer who saved Pujol

BarcelonaThe lawyer Joan Piqué Vidal, known for having led the defense of Jordi Pujol in the Banca Catalana case and having been convicted later for corruption, died in Castelldefels on October 7th at the age of 93. His life is the story of a fall. From being one of the most influential lawyers in Catalonia in the 90s, a member of what was then known as golden robes, he went on to enter prison following the Estivill case and to fall into absolute discredit, the example of what someone who believes in the functioning of the law must never do.

Born in Barcelona in 1933, by the early 80s he was already a star lawyer to whom the country's main businessmen and executives turned when they had problems, to the point that the president of the Generalitat himself, Jordi Pujol, with whom there was ideological affinity, turned to him when the complaint for the Banca Catalana case was filed. Piqué Vidal's writings managed to ensure that Pujol did not even have to face a trial. At the commission of inquiry into the Pujols that was held in 2015 in Parliament, Piqué Vidal, who was a councilor of the General Council of the Judiciary at the behest of the old CiU, revealed a surprising fact: formally he was never Pujol's lawyer, but rather directed the defense on behalf of other executives of the entity. The history of Catalonia could have changed if that complaint had had a different outcome. And, evidently, that case enhanced the prestige of Piqué Vidal and his firm, where around forty people ended up working. In fact, in 1990 he was one of the founders of Iberforo, the most important network of law firms in Spain at that time, with Óscar Alzaga, president of the Democratic Popular Party. Six years later, he disassociated himself from it due to his alleged link with the KIO case and after tense relations due to his connection with the financier Javier de la Rosa, who was held responsible for the great crisis of Kuwait's interests in Spain, through KIO.

The Estivill case

The great descent into hell for Piqué Vidal occurred in the late 90s and early 2000s, when the B-side emerged of someone who not only practiced law, but also taught law at the University of Barcelona. The Barcelona lawyer was sentenced in 2005 to 7 years in prison within the framework of the Estivill case, one of the biggest corruption scandals in democratic Spain, as it involved the judiciary. Indeed, Judge Lluís Pascual Estivill and the lawyer preferred by the bourgeoisie extorted businessmen and asked them for money in exchange for avoiding prison, thus breaking any respect for the rules of justice. Piqué Vidal entered prison in 2006 and left in 2009. He was 76 years old. Piqué and Estivill were attributed various crimes of prevarication, bribery, illegal detention, and threats.

But Piqué Vidal's scandals did not end there. The lawyer was involved in the Casinos case, in which the alleged illegal financing of CDC was investigated, or the Cocaine case, in which he was accused of organizing a money laundering scheme. The figure of Piqué Vidal represents, in some way, the darkest part of the legal profession and acts as an epitome of an era, the 80s and 90s, in which, while democracy was being built, some made easy money their main currency.