The amnesty law agreed for its registration in the Congress of Deputies frees the independence leaders from having to return up to five million embezzled in the illegal 2017 consultation and the foreign promotion of the process.
In the text that the PSOE supports to achieve the investiture, it is established in article 8 that the amnesty also extends to accounting responsibilities with public money. “Civil and accounting liabilities will be extinguished derived from the acts described in article 1.1 of this law” which are those covered since 2012. And, in case there is any temptation for another interpretation in the Court of Accounts, they are declared “including those that are being the subject of procedures processed before the Court of Auditorsexcept those that have already been declared by virtue of a final and executed ruling or administrative resolution.” This last section clearly grants amnesty to Carles Puigdemont, Oriol Junqueras, Artur Mas and around thirty independentists for the process opened by the 1-O y Diplomat. However, excepting the case of a final sentence, it does not lead to returning the other five million already seized by the illegal 2014 consultation of Artur Mas.
What is erased is the embezzlement in the other two processes and the Court of Auditors is also ordered to lift the deposits deposited and which were assumed, with great controversy, by the Generalitat of Catalonia itself. This is established in this other section of article eight: “The precautionary measures will be lifted agreed in the phase of preliminary or first instance actions provided for in articles 47 and 67 of Law 7/1988, of April 5, on the Operation of the Court of Accounts”. There will no longer be a need for bonds to exist and preventive embargoes are undone to those accused of embezzlement by the Court of Auditors.
As this law is not yet in force, the Court of Auditors maintains the hearing for the 1-O and Diplocat case on the 17th with an express summons for interrogation in Madrid of Carles Puigdemont himself.
In order not to leave any loopholes, the law itself plans to change the Functioning of the Court of Accounts in its article 39, which reads as follows: “Those who act under due obedience will be exempt from liability.provided that they have warned in writing of the imprudence or legality of the corresponding order, with the reasons on which they are based.”