The Court of Accounts refused to reduce the interest of the sentence for 9N by not seeing the will to repair the damage

It stresses that "the appellant must bear the consequences derived from his own decision and procedural action"

MADRID, 2 Mar. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The Court of Accounts (TCu) refused to lower the sentence imposed on the leaders of 9-N, and that they wanted to cut, leaving the million euros in interest associated with the main sentence of 4.9 million euros at around 590,000 euros. when considering that his true will when consigning that money was to comply with the legal obligation to "guarantee", not to "restitute" the money to the injured party, the Generalitat.

In its resolution, to which Europa Press has had access, the Chamber of Justice of the TCu sets out the reasons why, as announced last Monday, it has rejected the appeal filed by the former counselor Francesc Homs against an order of the last July 28, by which the Prosecution Section already dismissed the challenges of the liquidation of interests practiced.

Homs, whose allegations were supported by former president Artur Mas, Irene Rigau, Joana Ortega, Josefina Valls and Jordi Vilajoana, wanted the interest to be set at 590,547.63 euros. His argument was that the appropriations made "paralyzed or extinguished the accrual of interest", long before on April 30, 2020, the defendants requested to deposit that money in the coffers of the Catalan Government, at which time the TCu finalizes the calculation of interests.

The Chamber of Justice supports the Prosecution Section insofar as it applies the reiterated "doctrine" of the TCu, according to which "the extinction of the obligation to pay interest can only occur if the principal has been delivered or made available to the affected public entity, a circumstance that only occurs in the event as of July 30, 2020".

The TCu recalls that Homs "argues that it should have been previously informed of the contrary interpretation applied in the liquidation, because such an interpretation entails a penalty of the right to appeal and, in addition, violates civil and criminal jurisprudence."

The Prosecutor's Office, for its part, opposed the appeal, arguing that the jurisprudence cited by Homs cannot be applied here because it affected cases where "the consignment was made prior compliance with the sentence handed down to which voluntary compliance was intended, while At present there is no such calming down, since use has been made of the different resources".

The Chamber of Justice delves into these arguments to highlight that, "after the request of the investigating delegate for the parties to state the nature of the payment or guarantee of the consignment, they stated that it did not have the nature of reimbursement but of guarantee" .

"What's more, they subsequently opposed the reimbursement procedure due to scope and filed the pertinent appeals against the sentence issued on the day, including the appeal," he emphasizes.

For this reason, it concludes that "we are dealing with a guarantee or precautionary consignment, before an insurance consignment, and not before a consignment in payment", emphasizing that "the first, as decided in the contested order, does not exonerate the payment of the corresponding interests".

In addition, it highlights that "the lesson that is obtained" from the jurisprudence of the TCu and the Supreme Court "is that the appellant must bear the consequences derived from his own decision and procedural action, to the extent that it affects the obligation to compensate the totality of damages and losses suffered by the affected entity".

"This occurs when the appellant does not accept the provisional liquidation and opposes the reimbursement procedure due to scope, in which case the consignment made (...) has no liberating effects from the accrual of interest, since it is practiced in the face of disagreement with the provisional liquidation, in guarantee of assets, wealth and public effects, in the event of a possible future adverse sentence", he adds.

For the TCu, it is clear that with the consignment made in this case "there is no offer of payment intended to extinguish an obligation (...) --which derives from the provisional settlement act-- but only its assurance, and this precisely by the party's own decision, which, faced with the option of restitution or guarantee, opted for the latter, that is, for the guarantee or assurance, preventing the amount from entering the coffers of the injured party".