http://www.matthewparish.com/news.html
Jean-Claude Juncker And The Catalan Crisis
- 04.12.2017
In politics, it is usual that things are not as they first appear. A
dispute about the constitutional status of a region of Spain may
transpire to have its origins in a crisis about the way the European
Union is managed. A politician with a reputation for scandal at the top
of the European Union may turn out to be an important factor in
determining the trajectory of the Catalan autonomy move-ment.
Jean-Claude Juncker, one of the most outspoken critics of Catalan autonomy, is the Presi-dent of the European Commission. He took up this post in 2014. Before then, he had the most un-usual career. He was Prime Minister of Luxembourg for 18 years from 1995 to 2013. He is the longest-serving European prime minister of modern times (if one discounts fascist dictators such as Spain’s Francisco Franco). He was the Luxembourg Finance Minister for even longer: from 1989 to 2013. When he was Prime Minister, held the second most important position in the Luxem-bourg government simultaneously.
From 2005 to 2013 Juncker was simultaneously President of Eurogroup, an informal but powerful meeting of the Eurozone’s finance ministers. In 2006 he was also President of the Euro-pean Council (hence holding four jobs at the same time). Mr Juncker has always liked to keep him-self busy. He is one of the hardest-working members of the European bureaucracy, but he is also known as one of the most informal.
Juncker is accused of having been very drunk at several international meetings. He has been undiplomatic and intensely rude to European leaders. Incidents including slapping one in the face, calling another fat, kissing the bald forehead of a third, strangling a fourth and calling a fifth a dictator (the leader was a democratically elected member of Hungary, an EU member state). The man does many things that one might consider beneath the standards appropriate to a western European politician. This behaviour comes from a Luxembourger: one of the politest nations in Europe. Why does anyone put up with it?
Juncker has been repeatedly mired in scandal. He resigned as Prime Minister of Luxem-bourg amidst a scandal in which the Luxembourg intelligence services were discovered to have been wiretapping the Grand Duke of Luxembourg. Then he was involved in a tax haven scandal, in which it emerged that European companies had been relocating to Luxembourg under his watch as finance minister. They had thereby reduced their corporation taxes to as little as 1%, even though they had no substantial connections with Luxembourg.
Juncker is a member of the Christian Social People’s Party (CSV), by far the dominant polit-ical party in Luxembourg since World War II. There is something strange about Luxembourg poli-tics. If you have been a CSV Prime Minister of Luxembourg and you lose office or fall into disgrace, you may soon become President of the European Commission. The amount of time occupied by CSV ex-Prime Ministers as Presidents of the European Commission is remarkable in its compari-son to the time occupied by all the other (non-Luxembourger) Presidents of the Commission add-ed together.
Juncker has taken uncompromising positions on the Catalan nationalist movement, but he did not always do this. On 14 September 2017, he declared that the European Union would re-spect the outcome of the Catalan independence referendum to be held on 1 October 2017. Never-theless he asserted that Catalonia would have to apply to rejoin the European Union as a separate member state. This was not an unreasonable position.
By 13 October 2017, Juncker had changed his position. Now he said that Catalonia abso-lutely must not become independent. That is because, he explained, the European Union would become too complex to govern if it were full of small countries. Such a protest rings hollow coming from the former Prime Minister of the European Union’s smallest country, with a population of barely 400,000 people. Catalonia is closer to 8 million: a far more credible prospect for EU mem-bership by Juncker’s standards than Luxembourg. Luxembourg has the highest GDP per capita of any country in the European Union. That may be because by a long way Luxembourg is the biggest tax haven in the EU. This would be thanks to Juncker’s controversial work establishing it as the principal centre for European tax avoidance. Nevertheless his opposition to Catalonian autonomy is hypocritical.
On 26 October 2017 Juncker said that there were no human rights abuses by the Spanish state in Catalonia. He said this even though video had been aired showing paramilitary Police un-der the control of Madrid, beating voters and confiscating ballot boxes. He said this even though peaceful democratic politicians have been imprisoned without charge by courts based in Madrid under the control of a political party with origins in the fascist regime of Francisco Franco. On 10 November 2017 Juncker described Catalan nationalism as “poison”. On 19 November 2017 he said he unequivocally supported Madrid in the Catalan autonomy dispute. Madrid should be lock-ing up peaceful democrats and the Police should be beating voters. Everyone should vote for Ra-joy’s proxy parties in the forthcoming 21 December 2017 Catalan regional elections.
We need to investigate why Mr Juncker has adopted these opinions, and why they are so different from what he said before.
Under Juncker’s Presidency, the European Commission has been funding one of Catalonia’s recently-emergent political parties, Ciudadanos, that Mr Juncker now supports. Ciudadanos is a relatively new anti-independence Catalan political party. Commission funds have likewise been channelled towards a management consultancy company asserting that it is a specialist in public administration reform. This entity was involved in the authorship of a controversial 2013 public administration report. That report was prepared by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and advo-cated structural reorganisation of the Catalan public administration to withdraw Catalan regional autonomy powers to Madrid. This report was first commissioned under Mr Juncker’s predecessor as Commission President, Jacques Santer, before Mr Santer (and his entire Commission) were forced to resign in the face of a corruption scandal. Mr Santer was previously CSV Prime Minister of Luxembourg for eleven years.
One might be surprised to learn that European Commission funds are being used to fund political parties or politically-charged proposals for constitutional reform in member states. That might seem all the more surprising in the context of Mr Juncker’s multiple recent assertions that the Catalan crisis is internal to Spain, and hence the European Union has no proper role in it. But the European Union has been undertaking a role in this crisis. It has been funding a political party that takes an explicit position upon the question of Catalan independence. It has been funding pol-icy advocacy documents that argue for elimination of at least some of the precepts of Catalan au-tonomy enshrined within Spain’s delicate constitutional arrangements with its regions.
The way these funds have been channelled is through the European Regional Development Fund. This is a branch of one of the Directorates-General of the European Commission, falling un-der Mr Juncker’s responsibility, known as “DG-REGIO”. The stated purpose of the fund is to pro-mote development in Europe’s regions. The Fund is intended, on paper at least, to serve as a vehi-cle for subsidies from Europe’s wealthier regions to its poorer ones, to promote development ob-jectives. One of its less controversial achievements is the development of infrastructure, such as motorways leading to remote communities.
The Fund is massive. Although reliable figures are hard to establish amidst the obscure accounting practices of the European Commission, it is estimated that the Fund accounts for one-third of the EU’s budget. It is believed that the size of European Regional Development Fund mon-eys allocated to Spain is approximately EUR 6 billion per annum. That is roughly the budget of the Spanish Ministry of Economy, the sole domestic managing agent for European Regional Develop-ment Fund moneys destined for Spain. It is the task of the Ministry of Economy in Madrid to man-age these funds through a series of regional agencies. It is not clear that the Spanish Ministry of Economy has any other functions of substance. The Director-General within the Commission re-sponsible for the operation of the European Regional Development Fund, Marc Lemaître, is from Luxembourg. His political career (CSV, although he was never formally a party member) is closely intertwined with that of Jean-Claude Juncker.
The Spanish Minister of Economy, Luis de Guindos, is Juncker’s close personal friend and his political ally in Eurogroup and elsewhere. De Guindos is the only person to have held the post of Minister of Economy under current Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy of the Partido Popu-lar, a political party with Francoist origins. The Ministry run by De Guindos did not exist under the prior Socialist government of Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. Zapatero’s govern-ment was comparatively pro-Catalan. It negotiated a new constitutional regime for Catalonia in 2006, that Rajoy subsequently decimated before Spain’s Constitutional Court. This Court is domi-nated by Judges aligned with Rajoy’s political party.
After Rajoy’s Constitutional Court decision against Catalonia in 2010, the 2011 Spanish general election saw Rajoy come to power as Prime Minister in Madrid. The support of Rajoy’s Partido Popular in a 2013 European Parliament vote was decisive in procuring Juncker’s election as President of the European Commission. De Guindos, Rajoy’s close domestic ally, went to the se-cretive 2017 elite Bilderberg meeting with the President of Ciudadanos Albert Rivera and Jean-Claude Juncker. Juncker pushed De Guindos to be the next head of Eurogroup after Juncker’s res-ignation, but other EU member states were opposed. De Guindos has a reputation for scandal in-volving maladministration.
The way EU funds are siphoned off for political purposes in Catalonia, when they should not be, appears to be as follows. The Spanish Ministry of the Economy finances, as one of its re-gional implementing agencies for the European Regional Development Fund, an organisation called “CTP”, Comunidad de Trabajo de los Pirineos. This means “Working Community of the Pyr-enees”: a mostly meaningless expression. CTP is an obscure nongovernmental organisation that pretends (although it is not) to be an association of regional government agencies in France, Spain and Andorra. It could not be what it pretends to be, because Andorra is not in the European Un-ion. In practice CTP operates as an implementing agency for disbursement of European Regional Development Fund monies for the Spanish Ministry of Economy. It has no other clear function of value. Curiously, its registered office is in a historical tower in the small town of Jaca in the prov-ince of Aragon in northern Spain. This historical tower operates exclusively as a museum. The tower is a tourist attraction for fascist tourists, because it is associated with the Spanish fascist regime of Francisco Franco.
CTP then disburses funds to an organisation called “POCTEFA”. This stands for Programa INTERREG V-A España-Francia-Andorra. The legal nature of this organisation is likewise obscure. It pretends to be an EU institution, but it is not. It cannot be an EU institution, because Andorra is not in the European Union. Although POCTEFA’s website has no address, its telephone numbers are the same as those for CTP. POCTEFA apparently serves little ostensible purpose save to add an extra level of opacity for those seeking to trace the destination of money coming from the EU Re-gional Development Fund.
In turn, POCTEFA makes substantial grants to a so-called public sector management con-sultancy called Daleph. This is a strange name for a management consultancy. The word is from ancient Biblical Hebrew, whose meaning approximates to “Revenge by the Sword”. This imagery may be associated with the dictatorship of Francisco Franco. At least one of Daleph’s directors has associations with the Franco family. Daleph asserts that it has offices in Madrid, Barcelona and Je-rez de la Frontera, a small city in southwestern Spain. We should investigate the connection of this firm with Ciudadanos, the Catalan so-called anti-nationalist political party that serves as a proxy party for Mariano Rajoy’s Partido Popular in Catalonia. Ciudadanos Is electorally necessary in Cat-alonia because Partido Popular is intensely unpopular. Ciudadanos does not publish detailed ac-counts and does not reveal how many people it employs or how much it pays them. Albert Rivera lives a luxury lifestyle inconsistent with being the leader of a modest minority regional political party.
Inés Arrimadas, the youthful law school-educated de facto leader of Ciudadanos, was born in Jerez de la Frontera and spent six years working at Daleph. Her father was an anti-regionalist politician under the dictatorship of Francisco Franco. The de jure leader of Ciudadanos Albert Ri-vera appears nude in electioneering materials and accompanied De Guindos and Juncker to Bild-erberg. In practice he does not run Ciudadanos save to serve as a figurehead. One of the original political organisations that developed into the political party now known as Ciudadanos was a mi-nute local institution called Ciudadanos de Sanlúcar de Barrameda (“CIS”). CIS was headed by an obscure politician formerly associated with Rajoy’s Partido Popular and its predecessor party, headed by a Franco-era Minister of the Interior. That politician ultimately became an anti-regionalist kingmaker in the provincial politics of southwestern Spain. Sanlúcar is a small town close to Jerez. Daleph is one of the authors of the 2013 Spanish Ministry of the Economy report, advocating reform of Catalan public institutions to return the authority of Catalan regional auton-omous institutions to Madrid.
The EU funds disbursed by POCTEFA to Daleph, transmitted through an obscure bank in respect of which a senior executive of Daleph is also a senior executive of the bank, are in the or-der of many millions of Euros. They are substantially larger than many of the other grants made by POCTEFA. These funds are said to be for the purposes of arts and culture. Running a for-profit management consultancy working in constitutionally controversial public-sector restructuring is not arts and culture. Funding a political party is not arts and culture. These are political activities, the funding of which from European Commission funds is restricted by European Union law. An-other recipient of POCTEFA funds is the University of Navarra. Billed as Spain’s top private uni-versity, the University of Navarra is run by Opus Dei within a legal framework that is extraordi-nary for its opacity. Luis de Guindos is a senior member of Opus Dei.
This is corruption. I have studied a number of electoral systems in divided societies. This is a scheme of electoral corruption. To establish all the details, and the precise scope of each affected person’s moral and legal culpability, will require a substantial judicial enquiry. The Spanish legal system has not proven itself adept in investigating massive state corruption. The Gürtel and Bá-rcenas affairs have revealed that. But there must be a judicial enquiry into these matters. There are so many things that smell bad here, that the highest levels of independent judicial enquiry should be undertaken within both Madrid and Brussels.
If Juncker’s European Commission has been funding partisan politics in Catalonia, then it is no surprise that Juncker has adopted the positions he has in regard to the Catalan autonomy movement and the forthcoming Catalan elections. He is responsible for oversight of an EU funding institution that is interfering illegitimately in the forthcoming Catalan regional elections and in Spanish politics. He should not be doing this. Someone may have reminded him of what the Euro-pean Regional Development Fund, working through the Spanish ministry operated as a personal fiefdom by his friend Luis de Guindos, has been doing. That may have explained his dramatic change in position on the Catalan crisis. Irrespective, the European Union should not be interfer-ing in democratic processes within an EU member state by misusing EU taxpayers’ funds.
On 21 December 2017, the people of Catalonia vote. One of the parties they are able to vote for is Ciudadanos. They must decide whether this would be a good way for them to exercise their votes. The corruption can be cleaned up afterwards. For now, Catalonia needs a fair election. The people of Catalonia must vote, and they must vote with their good consciences.
Jean-Claude Juncker, one of the most outspoken critics of Catalan autonomy, is the Presi-dent of the European Commission. He took up this post in 2014. Before then, he had the most un-usual career. He was Prime Minister of Luxembourg for 18 years from 1995 to 2013. He is the longest-serving European prime minister of modern times (if one discounts fascist dictators such as Spain’s Francisco Franco). He was the Luxembourg Finance Minister for even longer: from 1989 to 2013. When he was Prime Minister, held the second most important position in the Luxem-bourg government simultaneously.
From 2005 to 2013 Juncker was simultaneously President of Eurogroup, an informal but powerful meeting of the Eurozone’s finance ministers. In 2006 he was also President of the Euro-pean Council (hence holding four jobs at the same time). Mr Juncker has always liked to keep him-self busy. He is one of the hardest-working members of the European bureaucracy, but he is also known as one of the most informal.
Juncker is accused of having been very drunk at several international meetings. He has been undiplomatic and intensely rude to European leaders. Incidents including slapping one in the face, calling another fat, kissing the bald forehead of a third, strangling a fourth and calling a fifth a dictator (the leader was a democratically elected member of Hungary, an EU member state). The man does many things that one might consider beneath the standards appropriate to a western European politician. This behaviour comes from a Luxembourger: one of the politest nations in Europe. Why does anyone put up with it?
Juncker has been repeatedly mired in scandal. He resigned as Prime Minister of Luxem-bourg amidst a scandal in which the Luxembourg intelligence services were discovered to have been wiretapping the Grand Duke of Luxembourg. Then he was involved in a tax haven scandal, in which it emerged that European companies had been relocating to Luxembourg under his watch as finance minister. They had thereby reduced their corporation taxes to as little as 1%, even though they had no substantial connections with Luxembourg.
Juncker is a member of the Christian Social People’s Party (CSV), by far the dominant polit-ical party in Luxembourg since World War II. There is something strange about Luxembourg poli-tics. If you have been a CSV Prime Minister of Luxembourg and you lose office or fall into disgrace, you may soon become President of the European Commission. The amount of time occupied by CSV ex-Prime Ministers as Presidents of the European Commission is remarkable in its compari-son to the time occupied by all the other (non-Luxembourger) Presidents of the Commission add-ed together.
Juncker has taken uncompromising positions on the Catalan nationalist movement, but he did not always do this. On 14 September 2017, he declared that the European Union would re-spect the outcome of the Catalan independence referendum to be held on 1 October 2017. Never-theless he asserted that Catalonia would have to apply to rejoin the European Union as a separate member state. This was not an unreasonable position.
By 13 October 2017, Juncker had changed his position. Now he said that Catalonia abso-lutely must not become independent. That is because, he explained, the European Union would become too complex to govern if it were full of small countries. Such a protest rings hollow coming from the former Prime Minister of the European Union’s smallest country, with a population of barely 400,000 people. Catalonia is closer to 8 million: a far more credible prospect for EU mem-bership by Juncker’s standards than Luxembourg. Luxembourg has the highest GDP per capita of any country in the European Union. That may be because by a long way Luxembourg is the biggest tax haven in the EU. This would be thanks to Juncker’s controversial work establishing it as the principal centre for European tax avoidance. Nevertheless his opposition to Catalonian autonomy is hypocritical.
On 26 October 2017 Juncker said that there were no human rights abuses by the Spanish state in Catalonia. He said this even though video had been aired showing paramilitary Police un-der the control of Madrid, beating voters and confiscating ballot boxes. He said this even though peaceful democratic politicians have been imprisoned without charge by courts based in Madrid under the control of a political party with origins in the fascist regime of Francisco Franco. On 10 November 2017 Juncker described Catalan nationalism as “poison”. On 19 November 2017 he said he unequivocally supported Madrid in the Catalan autonomy dispute. Madrid should be lock-ing up peaceful democrats and the Police should be beating voters. Everyone should vote for Ra-joy’s proxy parties in the forthcoming 21 December 2017 Catalan regional elections.
We need to investigate why Mr Juncker has adopted these opinions, and why they are so different from what he said before.
Under Juncker’s Presidency, the European Commission has been funding one of Catalonia’s recently-emergent political parties, Ciudadanos, that Mr Juncker now supports. Ciudadanos is a relatively new anti-independence Catalan political party. Commission funds have likewise been channelled towards a management consultancy company asserting that it is a specialist in public administration reform. This entity was involved in the authorship of a controversial 2013 public administration report. That report was prepared by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and advo-cated structural reorganisation of the Catalan public administration to withdraw Catalan regional autonomy powers to Madrid. This report was first commissioned under Mr Juncker’s predecessor as Commission President, Jacques Santer, before Mr Santer (and his entire Commission) were forced to resign in the face of a corruption scandal. Mr Santer was previously CSV Prime Minister of Luxembourg for eleven years.
One might be surprised to learn that European Commission funds are being used to fund political parties or politically-charged proposals for constitutional reform in member states. That might seem all the more surprising in the context of Mr Juncker’s multiple recent assertions that the Catalan crisis is internal to Spain, and hence the European Union has no proper role in it. But the European Union has been undertaking a role in this crisis. It has been funding a political party that takes an explicit position upon the question of Catalan independence. It has been funding pol-icy advocacy documents that argue for elimination of at least some of the precepts of Catalan au-tonomy enshrined within Spain’s delicate constitutional arrangements with its regions.
The way these funds have been channelled is through the European Regional Development Fund. This is a branch of one of the Directorates-General of the European Commission, falling un-der Mr Juncker’s responsibility, known as “DG-REGIO”. The stated purpose of the fund is to pro-mote development in Europe’s regions. The Fund is intended, on paper at least, to serve as a vehi-cle for subsidies from Europe’s wealthier regions to its poorer ones, to promote development ob-jectives. One of its less controversial achievements is the development of infrastructure, such as motorways leading to remote communities.
The Fund is massive. Although reliable figures are hard to establish amidst the obscure accounting practices of the European Commission, it is estimated that the Fund accounts for one-third of the EU’s budget. It is believed that the size of European Regional Development Fund mon-eys allocated to Spain is approximately EUR 6 billion per annum. That is roughly the budget of the Spanish Ministry of Economy, the sole domestic managing agent for European Regional Develop-ment Fund moneys destined for Spain. It is the task of the Ministry of Economy in Madrid to man-age these funds through a series of regional agencies. It is not clear that the Spanish Ministry of Economy has any other functions of substance. The Director-General within the Commission re-sponsible for the operation of the European Regional Development Fund, Marc Lemaître, is from Luxembourg. His political career (CSV, although he was never formally a party member) is closely intertwined with that of Jean-Claude Juncker.
The Spanish Minister of Economy, Luis de Guindos, is Juncker’s close personal friend and his political ally in Eurogroup and elsewhere. De Guindos is the only person to have held the post of Minister of Economy under current Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy of the Partido Popu-lar, a political party with Francoist origins. The Ministry run by De Guindos did not exist under the prior Socialist government of Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. Zapatero’s govern-ment was comparatively pro-Catalan. It negotiated a new constitutional regime for Catalonia in 2006, that Rajoy subsequently decimated before Spain’s Constitutional Court. This Court is domi-nated by Judges aligned with Rajoy’s political party.
After Rajoy’s Constitutional Court decision against Catalonia in 2010, the 2011 Spanish general election saw Rajoy come to power as Prime Minister in Madrid. The support of Rajoy’s Partido Popular in a 2013 European Parliament vote was decisive in procuring Juncker’s election as President of the European Commission. De Guindos, Rajoy’s close domestic ally, went to the se-cretive 2017 elite Bilderberg meeting with the President of Ciudadanos Albert Rivera and Jean-Claude Juncker. Juncker pushed De Guindos to be the next head of Eurogroup after Juncker’s res-ignation, but other EU member states were opposed. De Guindos has a reputation for scandal in-volving maladministration.
The way EU funds are siphoned off for political purposes in Catalonia, when they should not be, appears to be as follows. The Spanish Ministry of the Economy finances, as one of its re-gional implementing agencies for the European Regional Development Fund, an organisation called “CTP”, Comunidad de Trabajo de los Pirineos. This means “Working Community of the Pyr-enees”: a mostly meaningless expression. CTP is an obscure nongovernmental organisation that pretends (although it is not) to be an association of regional government agencies in France, Spain and Andorra. It could not be what it pretends to be, because Andorra is not in the European Un-ion. In practice CTP operates as an implementing agency for disbursement of European Regional Development Fund monies for the Spanish Ministry of Economy. It has no other clear function of value. Curiously, its registered office is in a historical tower in the small town of Jaca in the prov-ince of Aragon in northern Spain. This historical tower operates exclusively as a museum. The tower is a tourist attraction for fascist tourists, because it is associated with the Spanish fascist regime of Francisco Franco.
CTP then disburses funds to an organisation called “POCTEFA”. This stands for Programa INTERREG V-A España-Francia-Andorra. The legal nature of this organisation is likewise obscure. It pretends to be an EU institution, but it is not. It cannot be an EU institution, because Andorra is not in the European Union. Although POCTEFA’s website has no address, its telephone numbers are the same as those for CTP. POCTEFA apparently serves little ostensible purpose save to add an extra level of opacity for those seeking to trace the destination of money coming from the EU Re-gional Development Fund.
In turn, POCTEFA makes substantial grants to a so-called public sector management con-sultancy called Daleph. This is a strange name for a management consultancy. The word is from ancient Biblical Hebrew, whose meaning approximates to “Revenge by the Sword”. This imagery may be associated with the dictatorship of Francisco Franco. At least one of Daleph’s directors has associations with the Franco family. Daleph asserts that it has offices in Madrid, Barcelona and Je-rez de la Frontera, a small city in southwestern Spain. We should investigate the connection of this firm with Ciudadanos, the Catalan so-called anti-nationalist political party that serves as a proxy party for Mariano Rajoy’s Partido Popular in Catalonia. Ciudadanos Is electorally necessary in Cat-alonia because Partido Popular is intensely unpopular. Ciudadanos does not publish detailed ac-counts and does not reveal how many people it employs or how much it pays them. Albert Rivera lives a luxury lifestyle inconsistent with being the leader of a modest minority regional political party.
Inés Arrimadas, the youthful law school-educated de facto leader of Ciudadanos, was born in Jerez de la Frontera and spent six years working at Daleph. Her father was an anti-regionalist politician under the dictatorship of Francisco Franco. The de jure leader of Ciudadanos Albert Ri-vera appears nude in electioneering materials and accompanied De Guindos and Juncker to Bild-erberg. In practice he does not run Ciudadanos save to serve as a figurehead. One of the original political organisations that developed into the political party now known as Ciudadanos was a mi-nute local institution called Ciudadanos de Sanlúcar de Barrameda (“CIS”). CIS was headed by an obscure politician formerly associated with Rajoy’s Partido Popular and its predecessor party, headed by a Franco-era Minister of the Interior. That politician ultimately became an anti-regionalist kingmaker in the provincial politics of southwestern Spain. Sanlúcar is a small town close to Jerez. Daleph is one of the authors of the 2013 Spanish Ministry of the Economy report, advocating reform of Catalan public institutions to return the authority of Catalan regional auton-omous institutions to Madrid.
The EU funds disbursed by POCTEFA to Daleph, transmitted through an obscure bank in respect of which a senior executive of Daleph is also a senior executive of the bank, are in the or-der of many millions of Euros. They are substantially larger than many of the other grants made by POCTEFA. These funds are said to be for the purposes of arts and culture. Running a for-profit management consultancy working in constitutionally controversial public-sector restructuring is not arts and culture. Funding a political party is not arts and culture. These are political activities, the funding of which from European Commission funds is restricted by European Union law. An-other recipient of POCTEFA funds is the University of Navarra. Billed as Spain’s top private uni-versity, the University of Navarra is run by Opus Dei within a legal framework that is extraordi-nary for its opacity. Luis de Guindos is a senior member of Opus Dei.
This is corruption. I have studied a number of electoral systems in divided societies. This is a scheme of electoral corruption. To establish all the details, and the precise scope of each affected person’s moral and legal culpability, will require a substantial judicial enquiry. The Spanish legal system has not proven itself adept in investigating massive state corruption. The Gürtel and Bá-rcenas affairs have revealed that. But there must be a judicial enquiry into these matters. There are so many things that smell bad here, that the highest levels of independent judicial enquiry should be undertaken within both Madrid and Brussels.
If Juncker’s European Commission has been funding partisan politics in Catalonia, then it is no surprise that Juncker has adopted the positions he has in regard to the Catalan autonomy movement and the forthcoming Catalan elections. He is responsible for oversight of an EU funding institution that is interfering illegitimately in the forthcoming Catalan regional elections and in Spanish politics. He should not be doing this. Someone may have reminded him of what the Euro-pean Regional Development Fund, working through the Spanish ministry operated as a personal fiefdom by his friend Luis de Guindos, has been doing. That may have explained his dramatic change in position on the Catalan crisis. Irrespective, the European Union should not be interfer-ing in democratic processes within an EU member state by misusing EU taxpayers’ funds.
On 21 December 2017, the people of Catalonia vote. One of the parties they are able to vote for is Ciudadanos. They must decide whether this would be a good way for them to exercise their votes. The corruption can be cleaned up afterwards. For now, Catalonia needs a fair election. The people of Catalonia must vote, and they must vote with their good consciences.
Traduït aquí al castellà:
(actualització posterior: la traducció a la web que hi feia referència ha estat eliminada)
Article deVilaweb acusant Mr. Parish d'intoxicar:
https://www.vilaweb.cat/noticies/desintoxicacio-juncker-no-esta-financant-ciutadans-amb-diners-de-la-unio-europea/
Darrerament, circula amb insistència per les xarxes socials aquest text de Matthew Parish en què Jean-Claude Juncker és acusat de corrupció per finançar amb diners públics europeus Ciutadans.
Matthew Parish és advocat, director de l’empresa Gentium Law, amb seus a Ginebra, Friburg i Londres, especialitzada a arbitrar conflictes, especialment relatius a disputes comercials internacionals.
El text diu que Juncker pren partit en el cas de Catalunya finançant Ciutadans amb fons europeus. Parish estableix aquesta cadena de coincidències:
—A través de l’European Regional Development Fund, la Comunitat de Treball dels Pirineus rep una gran quantitat de diners, una part dels quals es desvia mitjançant INTERREG V-A Espanya-França-Andorra a una empresa de consultoria anomenada Daleph, en què va treballar Inés Arrimadas. I s’entén del text, per bé que ell no ho diu explícitament, que Daleph desvia aquests fonts a Ciutadans.
VilaWeb ha analitzat l’article i valora que la teoria que explica no té gens de credibilitat, perquè conté errades notables a l’hora d’explicar el funcionament del suposat esquema de corrupció.
—Parish afirma que la Comunitat de Treball dels Pirineus és una ‘obscura organització no governamental’ que només serveix per a dissimular el pas dels diners. Segons ell, pretén representar els governs regionals però no els representa; diu que una prova que no és una institució clara és que incorpora Andorra, que no forma part de la UE.
Parish s’equivoca. La Comunitat de Treball dels Pirineus és una organització fundada pel Consell d’Europa (del qual sí que forma part Andorra) i no pas per la Unió Europea. És una organització coneguda que, efectivament, incorpora i coordina governs de la zona dels Pirineus, inclosa la Generalitat de Catalunya i el govern de Catalunya Nord – Occitània. El president actual de l’organització és el president d’Aquitània, Alain Rousset. La Comunitat de Treball dels Pirineus gestiona fons de la Unió Europea que poden ser usats per Andorra, també, però amb unes condicions particulars.
—A continuació Parish afirma que la Comunitat de Treball dels Pirineus traspassa fons a una organització anomenada ‘POCTEFA’ o Programa INTERREG V-A Espanya-França-Andorra. En diu també que és una organització ‘obscura’ que pretén formar part de la Unió Europea però que no en forma part. ‘POCTEFA –diu Parish– serveix per a poca cosa més que per a afegir una capa més d’opacitat a aquells que intenten cercar la destinació dels diners que provenen del Fons de Desenvolupament Regional europeu’ (i que, segons la seva tesi, serveixen per a finançar Ciutadans).
En aquest punt Parish va completament equivocat. POCTEFA no és cap organització, sinó un programa europeu oficial de suport financer al desenvolupament regional, creat precisament per ajudar a la cooperació transfronterera entre els estats andorrà, espanyol i francès. El programa és transparent i entre les institucions que hi són adherides hi ha la Generalitat de Catalunya, concretament la Direcció General de Promoció Econòmica, Competència i Regulació. POCTEFA no envia descontroladament diners provinents del Fons de Desenvolupament Regional europeu a ningú, sinó que tramet ajudes que poden arribar a ser d’un 65% del total dels projectes que s’hi presenten i sempre amb concurs públic. En total, té un pressupost de 189 milions d’euros per al període 2014-2020.
A partir d’aquests errors tan greus, la resta del text no es pot considerar creïble: la tesi segons la qual hi ha una organització opaca creada per canalitzar fons europeus a Ciutadans no és compatible de cap manera amb la realitat de la Comunitat de Treball dels Pirineus i del Programa INTERREG V-A Espanya-França-Andorra.
la meva opinió sobre l'article de Vilaweb:
En aquest cas discrepo de Vilaweb
Si volen verificar les dades que les verifiquin. Però que l'autor es confongui en l'adscripció d'un organisme, sobre si és del Consell d'Europa o de la UE no nega l'entramat financer opac gestionat per Luis De Guindos i vehiculat a través de Daleph i tot el que sen desprèn.
I com que no ho nega, abans de dir que és fals caldria que fessin feina de periodisme i investiguessin.
L'article d'en Parish no diu que sigui junker directament qui finança C's. Mai es faria res d'aquesta mena de forma tant evident! Diu que és a través d'un entramat d'agències europees amb pressupostos generosos i redirigits pel ministre De Guindos. C's igualment té un pressupost molt gran, opacitat sobre l'origen dels diners i un cas obert al tribunal de cuentas que es va tancar sense esclarir res... i només cal saber qui forma aquell tribunal i com treballa per entendre-ho. De tot plegat el que s'entén és que l'Arrimadas té molta més força del que podria aparentar a primera vista. L'article de Vilaweb esmenta alguns errors sobre l'origen d'aquestes agències, però ni en nega l'existència ni esclareix dubtes sobre la seva finalitat. Només diu "A partir d’aquests errors tan greus, la resta del text no es pot considerar creïble". Doncs discrepo. Que el sr. Parish es confongui en atribuir un organisme del Consell d'Europa i es cregui que és de la UE no nega tota la resta.
Rèplica del Sr. Parish a Vilaweb https://www.vilaweb.cat/noticies/replica-a-larticle-desintoxicacio-no-es-cert-que-juncker-financi-ciutadans-amb-diners-de-la-unio-europea/
Matthew Parish ha enviat a VilaWeb aquest text demanant que sigui publicat com a rèplica a l’article ‘Desintoxicació: no és cert que Juncker financi Ciutadans amb diners de la Unió Europea‘.
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Aquest article està escrit com dret a rèplica a l’article anònim publicat el 7 de desembre de 2017 a la web de Vilaweb. Aquest article criticava la meva publicació d’un article previ, que investiga les denúncies de corrupció al Ministeri d’Hisenda espanyol.
Sóc advocat amb seu a Ginebra, Suïssa. Vaig treballar anteriorment al Banc Mundial. He servit com a mediador de pau a Nacions Unides. El meu treball ha inclòs l’anàlisi de sistemes electorals en societats dividides i esquemes de corrupció electoral. Tinc llicència per exercir d’advocat a Anglaterra, Nova York i Suïssa.
El meu primer graus d’estudis va ser del Christ’s College, de la Universitat de Cambridge. La meva tesi doctoral va ser supervisada per un dels juristes més famosos dels Estats Units d’Amèrica. Va ser seguidament publicada com un aclamat treball sobre la resolució de conflictes civils. Sóc soci director d’un despatx d’advocats de Ginebra. Una revista suïssa d’economia m’ha nomenat una de les tres-centes persones més influents de Suïssa.
El 2016 vaig treballar a la campanya de un candidat a ser Secretari General de Nacions Unides, que finalment va quedar segon, per darrera de l’antic primer ministre portuguès António Manuel de Oliveira Guterres, que admiro molt. He publicat dos llibres i més de dos-cents articles, entre altres sobre el dret internacional i la resolució de conflictes civils. Sóc partidari de la reforma estructural de les organitzacions internacionals, incloses les Nacions Unides. Solia treballar per a la Unió Europea.
No tinc una implicació anterior a la política espanyola o catalana. No sóc membre de cap partit polític en cap país. He litigat centenars de casos en la meva carrera com a advocat, incloent casos de difamació i corrupció. Sóc un líder mundial jove (Young Global Leader) del Fòrum Econòmic Mundial que celebra la seva reunió anual a Davos, Suïssa.
Menciono aquestes coses perquè vull persuadir al lector que sóc una persona creïble quines seves opinions val la pena considerar. Jo no publicaria greus acusacions a la lleugera. Accepto el debat i la crítica de les meves opinions, si es fan de bona fe.
Al matí del dimarts 5 de desembre de 2017, vaig distribuir un article anomenat Jean Claude Juncker i la crisi catalana. Aquest article seguia un flux de diners del Fons Europeu de Desenvolupament Regional cap a una consultora de gestió amb seu a Barcelona i a un partit polític anomenat Ciudadanos. Ciudadanos es presenta a les properes eleccions regionals de Catalunya que tindran lloc el 21 de desembre de 2017. El meu article està publicat aquí en castellà.
Aquest va ser el sisè d’una sèrie d’articles publicats sobre la crisi catalana. El cinquè, titulat Votaciones Catalanas, està publicat aquí. Els primers quatre articles, publicats només en anglès, es denominen Reflexió sobre el Conundrum català; Independència catalana; Segrestant a Catalunya; i Catalunya reprimida.
És important que es llegeixin aquests articles junts, perquè proporcionen el context del meu sisè article. Que es refereix a qüestions dels cinc anteriors. Els comentaris haurien d’anar fets sobre el conjunt dels sis, no només del sisè article per separat.
A principis del matí del dijous 7 de desembre de 2017, Vilaweb va publicar un article anònim en resposta al meu article sobre Jean-Claude Juncker. L’article va ser anomenat Desintoxicació: no és cert que Juncker financi als ciutadans amb diners de la Unió Europea. Desintoxicació era una crítica al meu sisè article sobre Catalunya. Contenia un enllaç al meu article, però només a la versió anglesa i no a la versió espanyola.
Desintoxicació no menciona cap dels meus articles anteriors. No critica cap de les afirmacions contingudes en aquells articles anteriors, que romanen sense resposta. Estranyament Desintoxicació no menciona el nom o la data de l’article que pretén criticar. La Desintoxicació és simplement un atac a la meva integritat personal.
El meu article sobre Jean-Claude Juncker va ser el producte del treball intensiu de diverses setmanes d’un equip d’investigadors polítics que operaven sota la meva supervisió. Aquest article revela un model de corrupció electoral potencial que, segons dic, hauria de ser objecte d’investigació judicial. El meu equip legal està ara preparant demandes judicials per presentar-les davant els tribunals de Madrid i Luxemburg. El meu article s’ha publicat en quatre idiomes: anglès, francès, alemany i espanyol.
Desintoxicació conté diverses declaracions i afirmacions sobre qüestions tècniques, incloent informació financera sensible no disponible al públic general. El meu article va ser escrit després de treballs minuciosos durant diverses setmanes, i com a mínim el producte de 48 hores de treball.
Mentre que el meu article identificava el seu autor i es va basar en fonts públiques, la Desintoxicació no identifica el seu autor i no descriu les seves fonts. En la meva opinió, la informació tècnica detallada en Desintoxicació probablement només pot venir d’una de les dues fonts imaginables: el Ministeri d’Economia espanyol, dirigit per Luis de Guindos, que meu article critica durament (i articles anteriors); o la Comissió Europea.
Em sembla poc probable que la Comissió Europea proporcionés informació privada sobre les seves operacions als mitjans tan ràpidament com per permetre la preparació d’un article de refutació en 48 hores. La Comissió Europea és una burocràcia engorrosa i no pot funcionar tan ràpidament, fins i tot si tingués capacitat jurídica per proporcionar aquesta informació sensible.
Per tant, dedueix que l’article pot haver estat preparat amb la cooperació activa i l’assistència de Luis de Guindos o d’un o més dels funcionaris que operen sota la seva tutela. No puc provar això. Però he demanat una investigació judicial sobre les qüestions que plantejo. Espero que el sistema jurídic espanyol investigui si el Ministeri que opera sota els auspicis de Luis de Guindos podria haver assistit en la preparació Desintoxicació. Demanaré que els tribunals espanyols ho facin, com a part de la demanda legal que presentaré davant el poder judicial de Madrid. Si vaig errat en la meva suposició i, en canvi, la Comissió Europea va proporcionar aquesta informació, llavors demanaré als tribunals de Luxemburg per a que revelin això.
Ja he informat que a Madrid sembla haver contractat sofisticats consultors de relacions públiques internacionals per suprimir o rebutjar comentaris de mitjans de suport del moviment d’autonomia català. També he expressat la meva preocupació perquè aquests consultors de mitjans puguin associar-se a una consultora de relacions públiques internacionalment desacreditada, ara en un procediment de fallida després que es va revelar que havia estat incitant a la violència racial que va portar a assassinats a Sudàfrica. Madrid té una història de relacions comercials amb aquesta organització. Desintoxicació no fa cap comentari sobre aquesta acusació.
Sota la llei, LO 2/1984, tinc el dret de resposta a un article que és difamatori per a la meva persona. Normalment no exerciria aquest dret de resposta a un article anònim. El meu enfocament típic és que els articles publicats de forma anònima són indicatius de la manca de confiança dels autors sobre el que diuen. Però, en aquest cas, he decidit exercir el meu dret de resposta. Això és degut a que m’ha cridat l’atenció que Desintoxicació s’ha distribuït àmpliament a les xarxes socials per una o més persones associades Ciudadanos. Juntament amb la connexió potencial de la Desintoxicació amb el Ministeri d’Economia, les meves preocupacions sobre la possible corrupció electoral es veuen reforçades per la publicació d’aquest article.
Desintoxicació és un article estrany. El seu títol té poc a veure amb els seus continguts. No hi ha res a Desintoxicació que desmenteixi la principal afirmació del meu article, que els fons de la Comissió Europea s’han canalitzat a una dita empresa consultora de gestió amb una estreta associació amb Ciudadanos. La connexió entre aquesta empresa i Ciudadanos és tan clara que no es pot negar de manera creïble (Desintoxicació no ho nega). Inés Arrimadas, la líder de facto de Ciudadanos, està íntimament relacionada amb l’empresa consultora de gestió que ha rebut fons de la Comissió Europea.
L’empresa en controvèrsia ha treballat en un gran projecte que ha defensat la reforma de l’administració pública a Espanya. Les reformes proposades anul·larien efectivament disposicions de l’Estatut d’autonomia de Catalunya. Els socis corporatius d’Arrimadas van estar íntimament involucrats en l’auge de Ciudadanos a Andalusia. Ciudadanos té associacions irrefutables amb el Partit Popular. Ciudadanos serveix com a proxy del Partit Popular a les regions d’Espanya, on el Partit Popular és tan impopular que no es pot escollir en unes eleccions. La Comissió Europea no hauria d’estar gastant els fons dels contribuents de la UE en aquestes coses. De nou, res d’això és contestat per l’autor o els autors anònims de Desintoxicació.
Desintoxicació diu que ha demostrat que certes afirmacions en el meu article original són falses. No ha fet tal cosa. Ha proporcionat una sèrie de detalls tècnics foscos sobre el finançament i l’estructura de dues organitzacions, denominades Comunitat de Treball dels Pirineus i el Programa INTERREG V-A Espanya-França-Andorra. Són organitzacions a través de les quals el meu equip ha descobert que s’ha proporcionat el controvertit finançament. Tanmateix, no es nega res d’això. He afirmat que això hauria de ser objecte d’investigació judicial. Cap persona raonable podria suggerir una altra cosa.
Desintoxicació proporciona informació tècnica sobre aquestes organitzacions, sense justificar el que diu. Almenys una de les afirmacions que l’article fa és inconsistent amb la informació que es captura del lloc web del Ministeri de Justícia. Però el punt més important és aquest. Els detalls que Desintoxicació proporciona són irrellevants. Fins i tot si aquestes afirmacions fossin certes (i per repetir, l’article no ofereix cap evidència de suport), no qüestionen la meva hipòtesi central. La desintoxicació no proporciona cap informació per refutar la meva preocupació que s’ha proporcionat finançament polítics inadequats a través d’aquestes organitzacions.
Desintoxicació és un article intel·ligent. Diu una sèrie de coses que són pràcticament certes. Aquestes afirmacions són d’alguna manera (però no clarament) dites per relacionar-se amb el meu article, al qual ataca Desintoxicació. Desintoxicació pretén que les quasi-veritats que afirma refutin una hipòtesi de corrupció electoral, quan no ho fan. L’article pretén que el que diu està relacionat amb el títol de l’article, però aquest títol és enganyós tenint en compte els continguts de l’article.
Donada la seva sofisticació, hem de considerar la hipòtesi que Desintoxicació podria haver estat escrita amb l’ajuda d’experts en la manipulació dels mitjans de comunicació. Ja he dit que sospito que Ciudadanos estan involucrats en enginyeria electoral. L’enginyeria electoral significa manipular la manera com la gent vota, fent coses com ara difondre històries enganyoses als mitjans. Aquest és precisament el tipus de perill que vaig demanar als lectors del meu article original estar atents.
Els lectors dels meus articles, i de Desintoxicació, ara s’han de formar les seves pròpies opinions. Heu de preguntar-vos si Desintoxicació podria haver estat publicada de bona fe. A continuació, heu de preguntar-vos si, a la llum del debat entre el meu equip i l’autor o autors anònims de Desintoxicació, considereu que Ciudadanos és un partit adequat per votar a les eleccions del 21 de desembre a Catalunya.
No puc votar en aquestes eleccions. Però estaré vigilant, perquè vull que aquestes eleccions siguin justes. Independentment de les vostres opinions sobre aquest debat, i independentment del que penseu de mi i de les meves opinions, jo insto a tots els lectors a votar. Hi ha una possibilitat molt elevada de que les eleccions siguin justes si la gent vota. No obstant el que la gent de Catalunya voti, us desitjo a cada un de vosaltres, a les vostres famílies i als vostres éssers estimats, el millor dels desitjos. Europa està mirant intensament la decisió que vosaltres, els catalans, fareu. Expresseu la vostra voluntat a les urnes.
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Matthew Parish és advocat internacional amb seu a Ginebra. www.matthewparish.com
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