Gonzalo Boye, lawyer of former Catalan President Carles Puigdemont, has been sitting since Monday on the bench of the National Court alongside the historic Galician drug trafficker José Ramón Prado Bugallo, alias Sito Miñanco, for alleged crimes for which The anti-drug prosecution demands nine years and nine months in prison against himin addition to a fine of 2.7 million euros.
Boye, what negotiated with the government the amnesty of “trials”thus returns, for the second time, as an accused before the National Court. The first time, in 1996, he was sentenced to 14 years in prison with two other members of the Chilean Left Revolutionary Movement (MIR) for collaboration with ETA in the kidnapping of businessman Emiliano Revilla.
Yesterday Sunday, Puigdemont asked, from his refuge in Belgium, that “anyone who can support him [a Boye] tomorrow, let him go and accompany him. He is not alone.” According to the former Catalan president, fugitive from justice, the Boye trial is a “manimation to make him pay for the failures of Spanish repression in Europe and take him hostage.
Dilluns begins lawsuit in which state keychain seeks to limit circulation @boye_g. I arrived at the interview and held my breath, because all this rottenness exuded a suffocating modesty. Blatant manipulation to pay for the failures of Spanish repression…
— krls.eth / Carles Puigdemont (@KRLS) November 17, 2024
Boye was prosecuted in December 2020 by Judge María Tardón for alleged money laundering crimes and continued falsification of documents committed within the drug trafficking organization headed by Sito Miñanco, who was his client.
Antidroga calls for a 31 and a half year prison sentence against the Galician drug trafficker for trying to introduce almost four tons of cocaine. Police tracked plot steps since 2016 in appeal Operation Myth.
Boye is not accused of this alleged crime against public health, but rather of having orchestrated a maneuver aimed at recover 889,620 euros that the police seized on February 6, 2017 at Madrid Barajas airport from members of the Sito Miñanco organization, including Manuel Pedro González Rubio.
These “human smugglers”, who, according to the prosecutor, were carrying the organization’s money hidden in a suitcase to transport it to Colombia and launder it, were intercepted. This led, according to the prosecution, to drug traffickers contacting Boye and another lawyer, Jesús Morán, to prepare documents that appear to be the legal origin of the money.
According to the prosecution, Boye advised the conspiracy to “prepare contracts for the sale of bills of exchange”, contracts which were presented during the administrative procedure opened after the intervention of the money “knowing that they were false and that the purchase and sale transactions were fictitiouswith the aim of recovering the seized money and hiding that it came from drug trafficking.”
The trial, which is scheduled to last until January 30, 2025 and will be presided over by Judge Alfonso Guevara, awaits the court’s decision on the request from several accused to suspend the hearing oral because one of them is detained in Dakar (Senegal) for another drug trafficking operation. They consider that this accused must attend the trial so as not to infringe his right to defense and that of others.
However, the third criminal section has already given the green light for the accused to testify at the last moment, once all other evidence has been collected.
Registration in Boye
The hearing would therefore begin with the previous questions. And Boye has prepared a battery of them, among which stands out the one linked to the violation of the right to privacy, defense and professional secrecy due to the search authorized by Judge Tardón at his home and office on 21 October 2019, which is considered void.
The researchers inspected “absolutely everything, without discriminating against those who data which could be linked to this case”says the lawyer’s defense brief. They examined his devices and seized all emails sent and received between 2010 and 2019, as well as all data contained on his cell phone.
This allegation by Boye coincides with the appeal that the Attorney General, Álvaro García Ortiz, filed against the search he underwent on October 30, during which the UCO accessed the contents of all his electronic devices between March and on the day of the intervention. , also without any discrimination to limit it to data related to the alleged crime of revealing secrets which the Supreme Court is investigating.
“I want to see what the F says nowprosecutor about my case, because he just claimed about the attorney general’s case that all of his emails and phone numbers are not accessible because it’s disproportionate,” Boye said in an interview with Vilaweb published yesterday.
The defense brief argues that Boye was involved in this process because of his work as a lawyer for Prado Bugallo and González Rubio, and points out that the latter declared after his arrest that the money seized at the airport was his and not that of the organization.
However, González Rubio modified version in 2020. He admitted that the money came from Sito Miñanco and said that another investigator, Manuel Andrés Puentes Saavedra, had the task of taking him to Colombia.
Before González Rubio, Puentes Saavedra declared on July 24, 2019 that the 889,620 euros confiscated came from Sito Miñanco and that Boye was responsible for falsifying documents to try to recover them.
After this statement, Puentes Saavedra was provisionally released.
“WhatsApp” messages
Boye’s defense brief says he had “several conversations with attorney Jesús Miguel Prieto Molina.” [exdefensor de Puentes Saavedra] in which he acknowledged in writing and verbally that his client had changed his version of events by lying and incriminating lawyer Gonzalo Boye in exchange for his release“.
The writing reproduces several WhatsApp messages exchanged between Boye and Jesús Prieto, in which he says that “some visits were made to him.” [a su cliente] and it looks like they promised him some things.
WhatsApp messages provided by Boye.
Recently, In a twist that could benefit Boye, González Rubio has once again changed his storyreturning to what he did in 2019.
In a letter addressed to the court, this defendant, who risks 43 years in prison, once again affirms that the money confiscated at the airport “was and is, in reality, his” and not that of the Sito Miñanco organization . .
