Borràs presents himself as the victim of a “persecution” and blames his subordinates

The former president of the Parliament, Laura Borràs, denied this Monday in the trial the crimes of corruption that are accused of her, assured that she has always acted within the law, dumped the blame on her subordinates and presented herself as a victim of ‘lawfare’ – ‘judicial war’ – and a “political persecution” for his status as an independentist leader. The hearing, in which Borràs faces six years in prison, has already entered its final phase.

In her appearance before the Superior Court of Catalonia that is judging her, the defendant declared that she has been trying to link her to corruption for years. He even insinuated the existence of a black hand with the aim of attacking her, since the web portal of the Institution of Catalan Letters (ILC) for which she is prosecuted is not active and that extreme, in her eyes, does not allow her to defend herself against the accusations.

«The works were called into question by police reports and this has had very serious consequences due to accusations of embezzlement and fraud (these crimes fell from the prosecution). If these websites hadn’t disappeared, you could see it and you wouldn’t have to explain yourself,” he said. Borràs got involved in the ‘estelada’ again, as a good part of the nationalist leaders do when they face a court. “I am being investigated for my political links,” he reiterated.

Borràs assured that he has always acted within the law and that he has not violated the contracting law at any time. He denied the division of contracts, arguing that the works for the ILC web portal that he awarded to his friend Isaías Herrero were diverse and not only consisted of creating the page. And he dumped the responsibility on third parties; that is, in his subordinates in the body of the Generalitat that he directed.

Specifically, he pointed to the administrator of the ILC, Assumpta Pagespetit, whom he said was the one who devised the contracts with Herrero. The files were ten, she said. And she stressed that they passed all the filters of the Administration, including those of the General Comptrollers of the Ministry of Culture. Pagespetit blamed Borràs during her testimony as a witness. She said she ignored her warnings and those of the Department of Culture comptroller that she could be “violating the legal framework” with the contracts.

The former president of the Parliament also activated the fan against the other defendant, Herrero, who, like her, faces six years in prison for prevarication and document falsification. The defendant blamed the one that she was his friend. Days ago, in his statement, he affirmed not only that Borràs knew that he divided contracts, but that he gave him instructions to do so and helped him prepare the “comparsa” budgets to avoid public tender. Borràs recalled Herrero’s drug addiction problems to try to discredit him. The defense of the former president of Parliament assures that the other two defendants have reached an agreement with the Prosecutor’s Office. For this reason, the president of Junts asked to testify at the end of the trial to replicate what was said about her.

The experts, key

Much of the judicial luck of Laura Borràs depends on the validity that the court grants to the evidence that incriminates her. The Prosecutor’s Office bases her accusation on some emails, between Borràs and Isaías Herrero. In them, the leader of Junts gave instructions to Herrero to prepare the aforementioned “comparsa” budgets in order to be able to award him allegedly divided contracts by finger. And the budgets that he presented, some real and others fictitious, also appeared in the emails.

But Borràs’s defense assures that these tests are not valid, since in his opinion there has not been an adequate chain of custody of the computer material seized at Herrero’s home. According to the experts hired by the nationalist leader, the hard drives containing the emails that incriminate her were altered. Experts believe that their content changed during the investigation. The lawyer Gonzalo Boye considers for them that these tests are not valid in the trial. One of the defense experts is Emilio Hellín, a former leader of Fuerza Nueva, sentenced to 43 years in prison in 1982 for the murder of the Socialist Workers Party militant Yolanda González.

The Civil Guard experts, on the other hand, denied this Monday that the computer files suffered any modification during their custody and in the different copies made during the investigation.