Former president Pujol hospitalized for pneumonia in run-up to corruption trial

The former Catalan president Jordi Pujol has been hospitalized for pneumonia.

On Sunday, he was in Clínica Sagrada Família, in Barcelona, as Catalunya Ràdio first published and the Catalan News Agency (ACN) confirmed.

Pujol's health worsened only eight days before his anticipated corruption trial is due to start on November 24.

Head of the Catalan government for over two decades (1980-2003) with his nationalist center-right CiU coalition, the politician admitted in 2014 that his family had had a significant amount of money in Andorra for decades, not declared in Spain's tax office, and said that was part of his father's inheritance.

After 11 years, Spain's National Court scheduled the beginning of his trial on November 24. Members of his family and 16 more people are facing an alleged corruption trial accused of unlawful assembly, money laundering, crimes against the tax office, and forging documents.

Jordi Pujol has been the longest-serving Catalan president in modern times. The court believes that his relatives may have benefited from the patriarch's post to get contracts from the Catalan government.

Given that he is 95, his legal team is trying to prevent him from going to Madrid in person for the sessions, which are due to come to an end next May. A forensic doctor from the Catalan legal medicine institute performed a medical check on him to determine whether his health allows him to face the appointment at the Spanish National Court.

His family expressed that he is willing to take part in the trial, but asked for doing so from Barcelona via video call.

Family "took advantage" of Pujol's position

In July 2020, the judge who led the investigation in Spain's National Court, José de la Mata, said he believed the family formed a criminal organization and, in a 509-page document, concluded that there was no solid evidence to prove that the Pujols' wealth came from inheriting the grandfather and banker Florenci Pujol's fortune, as the former politician had originally claimed in July 2014.

The April 2021 indictment stated the family had behaved as an illicit association or criminal organization due to their coordinated actions including simultaneously opening and closing bank accounts abroad as well as transferring funds between them in a strategy aimed at concealing the origin of the funds.

The court said that the family "took advantage of Pujol's position at the head of the Catalan government from which they obtained significant economic returns, which were deposited in bank accounts abroad and subjected to various transfers and transmissions, to hide their illicit origin."