This Monday, a sector of the Catalan independence movement sued Gonzalo Boye – lawyer for the former presidents of the Generalitat Carles Puigdemont and Quim Torra, among others – for an alleged crime of money laundering from drug trafficking. Since this week, the lawyer has been sitting on the bench alongside the historic Galician drug trafficker José Ramón Prado Bugallo, alias Sito Miñanco. Boye, who is facing a petition from the , has arrived at the court escorted by a large group of Junts per Catalunya leaders: among them, Torra himself; Josep Rius, vice president and spokesperson for the secessionist party; Jordi Turull, general secretary; Laura Borràs, former president of the party and the Parliament; Míriam Nogueras, spokesperson in Congress; and Senator Eduard Pujol. “This is a political trial,” Rius said before the start of the oral hearing.
At the end of 2022, the National Court opened an oral trial against Boye, Miñanco and another fifty people for what was called Operation Myth, a judicial investigation into the . The investigating judge María Tardón prosecuted those involved for their alleged participation in a network that sought to introduce almost four tons of cocaine into Spain and that, in addition, created “a criminal network to launder the money obtained.” That part of the plot is where Boye, who has had Miñanco among his clients, supposedly fits.
Puigdemont’s lawyer has always defended his innocence and assures that the accusation against him is based on the testimony of two defendants who changed their story to get out of prison. Furthermore, he affirms that a persecution has been mounted against him for representing pro-independence politicians in other cases. Junts has expressed itself along the same lines. “This is a setup for political motivations,” Rius insisted this Monday before the National Court: “Everyone knows that this trial would not be held today if Boye were not President Puigdemont’s lawyer. It is a new example of the lack of democratic quality of the Spanish judicial leadership. “They have already demonstrated it with the non-application of the amnesty law.”
The trial began this Monday at the National Court with the preliminary issues phase and is expected to last until January. The defenses of several defendants have requested that the start of the oral hearing be suspended (as two of the accused are absent, one because he is in an African prison and another who has not attended the Court and has been searched and captured) . In addition to the Junts politicians, a group of lawyers have also received Boye upon his arrival at the court as a show of support: “Never surrender [Nunca te rindas, en inglés]”, was read on a banner they displayed.
Boye is accused of collaborating with Miñanco for a “human email” for the band. According to the Prosecutor’s Office, which attributes to the lawyer a crime of money laundering and another of falsification of documents, in 2017 he was defending the historic drug trafficker and “advised” the plot to “draw up contracts for the sale of bills of exchange” with the idea of trying to recover the lost amount: almost 890,000 euros: “Boye presented said purchase and sale contracts in the administrative file knowing that they were false and that the purchase and sale operations were fictitious, with the aim of recovering the seized money and hiding that it came from drug trafficking.”
This movement occurred after, according to the investigation, Miñanco had hatched a double life in February 2016. At that time, the historic drug trafficker had already been in semi-freedom for almost a year in Algeciras (Cádiz), where he was serving his second sentence. In front of the public, he pretended that he had reintegrated (he worked in the mornings at a parking company and in the afternoons he went to an NGO that assisted the sick), but in reality, according to the summary, he was still immersed in the drug trafficking business. . The Public Ministry requests more than 30 years in prison for the Galician trafficker.
Judge Tardón explained it like this: “[Miñanco] “He is the main boss of a criminal organization that would be dedicated to the introduction of narcotics, mainly from South America.” He denies it: he told the magistrate from prison. Among the accused are also Miñanco’s ex-partner, Claudia Viviana Delgado; and his former lieutenant Luis Enrique García Arango, alias The old man.
