The Ministry of Justice must financially compensate former Generalitat Justice Minister Carles Mundó for the 33 days he spent in preventive detention for his involvement in the trial. The General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) has backed Mundó’s request, meaning the government must compensate him as the opinion of the senior judges’ panel is binding, but the amount is set by the executive branch. The Supreme Court acquitted Mundó of embezzlement and only convicted him of disobedience, a crime that carries no prison sentences. The former minister has asked for compensation of 19,409.81 euros, equivalent to 588 euros per day in prison.
Mundó was detained on November 2, 2017 by order of the then judge of the National Court, Carmen Lamela, the first director of the proceedings. The case later went to the Supreme Court, and Judge Pablo Llarena paroled Mundó on charges of misappropriation of public funds and disobedience, not rebellion like the others under investigation. The former adviser only sat on the Supreme Court bench for the other 12 pro-independence advocates, including former Vice President of the Generalitat Oriol Junqueras, and was tried between February and June 2019. The verdict, pronounced in October of the same year, acquitted Mundó of embezzlement (a crime for which prosecutors demanded seven years in prison for him) and sentenced him to a ten-month fine and a daily rate of 200 euros for disobedience.
In overturning his sentence, the Supreme Court reduced his fine by 66 days, d Justice” and the CGPJ agree with him in a report approved by the Permanent Commission. The CGPJ bases its decision on the case law of the European judiciary, in addition to the case law of the Supreme Court itself and the Constitutional Court. The council does not decide the amount of compensation demanded by Mundó, a number for the judiciary to determine.
In his petition, the ex-counselor lays out the “consequences” that being in prison has had on him and his family, warning that it has caused him “some harm that he need not bear”. Mundó claims personal consequences, recalling that when he was incarcerated at the age of 41 and with three minor children, his salary represented 89.55% of the total family income. This, he warns, represents “a serious inconvenience to the family economy” which was “exacerbated by the need to travel to Estremera prison, 632km from the family home in Gurb (Barcelona) to visit families” . “In the family sphere, too, both the elderly parents around them and the underage children at school and their partners had to endure countless comments about their procedural situation and imprisonment,” the former counselor laments, pointing out that his children needed the help of psychologists to handle the situation.
Mundó also points out that the company for which he worked as a lawyer for someone else suspended his contract on the day of his imprisonment, citing further moral damage and his personal, family and professional reputation. “The extraordinary media exposure, with the constant presence of his own image in all media, both television and digital media and on the front pages of the main newspapers, on charges of having committed such serious offenses against the Penal Code.” Because rebellion, Incitement to hatred, misappropriation of public funds with applications for a prison sentence of up to 24 years is a burden that, as the acquittal showed, should never have endured, let alone preventive detention for more than a year,” complains the ex-counselor .
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