Jordi Pujol resigns all privileges after fiscal fraud confession

Jordi Pujol resigned to all his privileges as a former president of the catalan government and he also renounces to all his honorary positions as a founder of CDC party and CiU coalition. He took that decisions after his fiscal fraud confession.

The current president of the catalan government, Artur Mas, announced Pujol’s decisions and said that ‘he made things easy, sensitive with the reprecussions of his confession’. Mas explained that Pujol said to him that he would do everything needed to help everyone and help the country’.

Mas, who met with Pujol on Monday, decleared that he is hurting and he felt ‘shame and compassion’. He also explained that he talked with Jordi Pujol on Friday morning and he said that he won’t go to the party meetings anymore.

The president stated: ‘I have to say that Jordi Pujol has worked his whole life for the country. Beyond his mistakes and weaknesses, he wants to continue helping.’ Mas also explained that the way he will do so is making their facilities available to afect as little as possible to the process of independence.

Confession

Jordi Pujol said Friday his family kept undeclared money abroad for over 30 years and apologised for the ‘mistake’. In a statement Jordi Pujol, who headed the Catalan government  from 1980 to 2003, said his father left an undisclosed amount of money which he stored abroad to his wife and seven children on his death in September 1980. ‘In recent days members of my family have regularised this inheritance,’ he added.

‘I am the only one responsible for these actions and their consequences and I want to express this publicly as well as my willingness to appear before tax authorities, or if needed, judical authorities, to explain these facts and stop insinuations.’ Pujol, 83, was one of the founders in 1974 of the Convergence and Union coalition.

The CiU and its leaders had long argued that reports that Pujol’s family held money abroad were ‘defamation campaigns’ so ‘it would not be too much to ask that they apologize to Catalans now’, he added.