The party of the former Catalan president Jordi Pujol has been ordered to repay €6.6m (£5.9m) after a court found it had run an illegal kickbacks-for-contracts scheme in which cash was channelled through Barcelona’s Palace of Catalan Music auditorium foundation.



On Monday, the Barcelona provincial court handed down prison sentences to 12 people, including a former treasurer of Pujol’s centre-right Democratic Convergence of Catalonia (CDC) and a former president of the foundation.

A long-running investigation known as the Palau (Palace) case established that the Spanish construction company Ferrovial had paid commission to the CDC in return for public works contracts, funnelling the money through the music venue between 1999 and 2009.

The court sentenced the former CDC treasurer Daniel Osàcar to four years and five months in prison for influence peddling and money laundering, while Fèlix Millet, the auditorium’s former president, and his righthand man, Jordi Montull, were given terms of nine years and eight months and seven years and six months respectively for embezzlement.

It said Millet and Montull had offered the CDC and Ferrovial “the entire economic structure of the Palace of Music” to enable them to hide the payment and collection of commissions, and they had employed an illicit strategy designed to provide them with “numerous funds” that were used to benefit them and their families. Two former Ferrovial chiefs were acquitted.

The case has become emblematic of the corruption scandals that beset the administrations of Pujol and his successor, Artur Mas. The latter stepped aside as regional president two years ago after the far-left Popular Unity Candidacy refused to enter into a coalition with him because of corruption allegations and economic cuts made by his government.



Last week, Mas quit as leader of the pro-independence Catalan European Democratic party, which replaced the CDC, saying Catalan politics needed a new leader. He denied that his decision was related to the Palau case.