The pressures of the patriotic police in Andorra: "We want the accounts of Mas, Junqueras and Pujol"

MadridThe influence of Operation Catalonia on the Pujol case has resurfaced in the National Court. Following the testimony of four of the heads of the so-called "patriotic police," who They turned a deaf earNext up was Joan Pau Miquel, who was CEO of Banca Privada de Andorra (BPA) and a while ago, a complaint Pressure and coercion from the state's clandestine operations to reveal banking information that could harm the Catalan independence movement. This Tuesday, specifically, he recounted two incidents: one in Andorra with Celestino Barroso, who was the Interior Ministry attaché at the Spanish embassy in Andorra from 2014 to 2017 and is scheduled to testify this week as a witness, and one in Madrid with Marcelino Martín Blas, who was head of internal affairs for the Spanish police and two weeks ago admitted to the meeting, but denied pressuring him to obtain banking information from BPA. In a conversation he recorded due to his suspicions, Celestino Barroso warned him that if BPA did not cooperate with the Spanish state, the bank would "die" because he had influence within SEPBLAC, the Executive Service of the Commission for the Prevention of Money Laundering and Monetary Offenses. After this initial approach by the patriotic police, Joan Pau Miquel later met at the Hotel Villa Magna in Madrid with Marcelino Martín Blas – known by the alias Felix—, who read him a statement saying that the Spanish state was "at war" with Catalan nationalism: "We want you to cooperate and provide us with bank account information for the families of Mas, Junqueras, and Pujol," he recalled. The "levers" he used to coerce him were threats of involvement from SEPBLAC (the Spanish Financial Intelligence Unit) and the United States Embassy. At the end of the questioning, prosecutor Fernando Bermejo asked him why he hadn't reported the incidents at the time, and he made his answer clear: "It's not so common to feel coerced and pressured by a state as powerful as the Spanish state."

"We were delighted to see them leave"

Another witness today was Manel Cerqueda, who was the non-executive chairman of Andbank, the bank where the family of the former president of the Generalitat held their money before transferring it to BPA. He testified that in 2010 he learned that the Pujol family had requested the destruction of some of the documentation regarding their accounts, and that the bank refused, which precipitated their departure. "We were delighted that they left and gave them every assistance to do so," he emphasized. Indeed, Tuesday's trial session was marked by the movement of money from Andorra. In fact, five witnesses who are Andorran citizens—besides Joan Pau Miquel—testified from the Andorran courts.

The first witness was an agent from the UDEF – the central unit for economic and fiscal crime – who emphasized the fact that in 2010 some members of the Pujol family transferred money from Andbank to BPA in cash: "It's an illogical operation that can't be understood except from the perspective of concealment; it's yet another attempt to break the traceability," he maintained. He believes that the "normal" thing would have been to do it through transfers.

One recurring theme throughout the morning was the eldest son's use of Panamanian foundations to make it more difficult for BPA employees to discover he had accounts in Andorra. The UDEF (Financial and Economic Crime Unit) considered this a suspicious way to "conceal his identity." However, his lawyer, Cristóbal Martell, challenged this, pointing out that when the Spanish courts requested information from Andorra, this did not prevent them from providing all the necessary details. Later, a BPA executive, Cristina Lozano, argued that the creation of Panamanian companies offered to Jordi Pujol Ferrusola was the "same solution" they offered to other clients concerned that a bank employee might "sell their data to the highest bidder." Through this method, his name "would not appear" in internal inquiries, but it would still be "fully monitored and known" by BPA management. "There were no hidden or secret accounts; there was always traceability," she concluded.