Josep Prat has reached an agreement with the Prosecutor's Office in the trial of the Innova case, whose hearing will begin on May 26 in the Tarragona Court for the allegedly irregular contracts linked to the construction of the new Reus hospital.
The agreement arrives fourteen years after the start of the investigation and before the trial begins. Prat, former president of the Institut Català de la Salut and former general director of Innova, admits to the crimes of falsehood, embezzlement, and prevarication, while it remains unconfirmed whether the architect Jorge Batesteza will accept the same conditions.
The Prosecutor's Office lowered the criminal front before the May 26 trial
The conformity will be made public in the final conclusions procedure. The agreement has the adhesion of the Reus City Council and the CUP, which have also waived claiming civil liabilities after the reimbursement of the amounts claimed through the insurance guarantee before the Court of Auditors.
The company BBATS Consulting & Projects will be excluded from the procedure.
Before the agreement, the Prosecutor's Office requested eight years in prison and 20 years of absolute disqualification for Prat and Batesteza, in addition to another two years in jail and a fine of 200,000 euros for influence peddling. The final scope of the conviction will be known when the parties present their final conclusions before the Court of Tarragona.
Judit Gené, Prat's lawyer, requested the mitigating circumstance of undue delay due to the time elapsed and announced that she will claim the lifting of the embargoed assets. Prat managed Innova between 2007 and 2011 and was also the head of the ICS.
Batesteza was accused of a double charge that raised the cost by 186,400 euros
The accusation places Jorge Batesteza in a dual role during the works at the Reus hospital. It attributes to him having worked at the same time for Innova and for the UTE Euroconsult Axxo Gestión, contractor for the project manager, for the technical monitoring and assistance of the work.
The extra cost attributed to that operation amounts to 186,400 euros.
The first session of preliminary matters also left an open issue between the defense and the public prosecution regarding the validity of the investigation. Several lawyers claimed partial or total nullities for violation of the right to defense, for the secrecy of the investigation, and for the carrying out of proceedings that, in their opinion, were outside the procedure.
David Rocamora, Carles Manté's lawyer, focused part of his challenge on the origin of the investigation and on the search of his client's home.
"The will of the police force lay in interpreting everything interpretable in the worst possible way to generate a narrative against their client" - David Rocamora, lawyer for Carles Manté
Rocamora requested the annulment of the evidence obtained in that search, maintaining that documentation protected by professional secrecy had been accessed, and added that the defense had requested about 40 testimonies that were not carried out. Along the same lines, Lluís Miquel Pérez's lawyer, Antoni Aluja, requested the annulment of the separate second piece.
Aluja maintained before the court that the secrecy of the investigation generated inequality and that during the investigation, no exculpatory evidence proposed by the defense was admitted. The representation of Esther Ventura also requested the annulment of Josep Prat's 2016 police statement to the Civil Guard due to the absence of all defenses.
The Prosecutor's Office denied that the case originated from press clippings
Faced with these objections, the Prosecutor's Office rejected all requests for nullity and defended that the investigation began with documentation sent by the Reus City Council in 2012, not with journalistic information. Carles Perdiguero, representative of the CUP, also rejected the accusations of lack of impartiality against the instructor.
In the session, Josep Maria Pou, Esther Ventura's lawyer, stated that Prat declared that the hiring occurred because the Minister of Health Marina Geli told him to.
The main case and separate piece number two bring together a trial that has reached judgment fourteen years after its start, with an agreement already underway for Prat and with the defense's request to lift the assets that remain embargoed.