Prosecutors oppose pardoning former parliament speaker Laura Borràs

The High Prosecutor's Office of Catalonia has issued a report opposing the pardon of the former parliament speaker Laura Borràs, sentenced to 4.5 years in prison and 13 years of disqualification, plus a fine of €36,000, for corruption.

Specifically, Borràs was convicted of prevarication and falsification of an official document when she directed the Institution of Catalan Letters (ILC). The Supreme Court upheld the conviction in February 2025 after appeal.

The public prosecutor opposes the request for partial pardon made by the same sentencing court, the High Court of Catalonia (TSJC). This legal mechanism is used when the court understands that it must impose a certain penalty, but at the same time, considers it excessive, in this case, because "it does not allow for sentence reduction procedures." The request for total pardon came from writer Margarida Aritzeta.

For the time being, the court has suspended her imprisonment while the Spanish government decides on the pardon. The High Court has proposed pardoning the prison sentence that exceeds two years, which if granted would mean that Borràs would not enter jail. Spanish law dictates that, in most cases, first-time offenders of financial crimes do not enter prison if their convictions are two years or under. 

Splitting contracts to avoid tenders

Between March 2013 and February 2017, the ILC awarded, "through its director," 18 minor contracts related to its website, for a total value of €330,000, in which Borràs "intervened", "proposing and awarding the contract, approving the expenditure, certifying the execution of the service, issuing the corresponding invoice and finally authorizing the payment," according to the judge's decree published on March 14, 2022. 

Of these contracts, six were awarded to Isaías Herrero, for a total of €112,500, and one to Andreu Pujol, for €20,050. Six contracts were also awarded to Xarxa Integral for €101,035 and three to Freelance for €54,437, two groups Isaías H was a member of.

The contracts amounted to a total of €330,000, of which the ILC paid out €309,000 in the end. 

Shortly after having been appointed director of the ILC, Borràs introduced Isaías Herrero to the staff as head of the website. The two exchanged emails about invoices and contracts, concluding that the same vendor could not file invoices for different items in the same year and that they, therefore, had to "knock on doors" to bill different names and to avoid exceeding the €18,000 maximum for minor contracts.

At the time, public contracts in Catalonia over €18,000 had to be put to tender. The court has found that Borràs fraudulently split a larger payment into smaller contracts in order to be able to choose who would be awarded the work, and to avoid a public tender process.

'We created fake quotes'

Isaías Herrero, a friend of suspended parliament speaker Laura Borràs, confessed to splitting contracts to avoid public tenders during the trial, thus incriminating the politician.

An IT expert, he has been negotiating a deal with the public attorney to incriminate himself and the politician to avoid imprisonment as prosecutors had requested a six-year sentence and €72,000 fine for him.

Although he admitted to making fake contracts for the Catalan Institute of Letters under Borràs' orders, the suspended parliament speaker denied all charges.

During his testimony, Herrero explained that contracts did not surpass €18,000 as this way they would not need to be put to a public tender according to the legislation at the time. They would have to split the required work into different parts to do it.