Josep Prat, former director of Innova and former president of the ICS, and the architect Jorge Batesteza reached an agreement with the Prosecutor's Office this Monday in the first session of the trial of the Innova case in the Audiència de Tarragona. The agreement affects the crimes of prevarication, embezzlement of public funds, and document forgery, for which the public ministry was seeking eight years in prison for Prat.
The agreement comes fourteen years after the start of the case and before the oral trial scheduled for May 26 begins. That delay has led to the incorporation of the mitigating circumstance of undue delays in a hearing that still has the preliminary issues raised by several defenses open.
The case incorporated the mitigating circumstance after fourteen years of processing
Initially, both Prat and Batesteza faced 10 years in prison. The accusers have also waived civil liability after both paid the amounts demanded by the Court of Auditors.
The request for influence peddling carries two years in prison.
In addition to the crimes included in the agreement, both defendants face charges for influence peddling. For that section, the prosecution requests two years in prison, a fine of 200,000 euros, and six years of special disqualification from public office.
Judit Gené, Prat's lawyer, requested the lifting of the real estate embargo at the hearing. The details of the agreement, however, will not be made public until the end of the trial, when it will be officially signed.
The defense raised nullities and the Prosecutor's Office rejected the lack of defense
The session also served for several defenses to question part of the instruction. David Rocamora, lawyer for Carles Manté, maintained that there was a violation of the right to defense and asked to declare null the evidence obtained from the home search.
"The Civil Guard interprets the documents as it wishes; access to information and conversations between lawyer and client is a loss of fairness, it is an unrecoverable failure" - David Rocamora, lawyer for Carles Manté
Antoni Maria Alujà, lawyer of the former mayor of Reus Lluís Miquel Pérez, claimed the nullity of the separate piece second for the secrecy of proceedings. Josep Maria Pou, defense of Ester Ventura, also asked to annul the police statement that Prat made to the Civil Guard in March 2016 because it was not made before the rest of the defenses.
The hearing included objections to the popular accusation regarding the contract of the UTE Euroconsult Catalunya, S.A. and AXXO Gestión Proyectos, S.L.
The lawyers of Jose Vicente Gómez Rebollo and Sergi Luqui rejected that the modification of that contract may constitute crimes of influence peddling, criminal organization, or fraud against public administration. Faced with these objections, the Prosecutor's Office defended that the procedure is based on reports from the Reus City Council and not on "press clippings".
Carles Perdiguero, representing the popular prosecution, stated that there is no defenselessness and maintained that all crimes except one are substantiated. The court of the fourth section of the Audiència de Tarragona must now resolve these preliminary issues before the start of the trial scheduled for May 26.