Fèlix Millet, the looter of the Palau de la Música, dies at the age of 87

The former president of the Palau de la Música, Félix Millet.ALBERT GARCÍA

The confessed looter of the Palau de la Música, Fèlix Millet, died this Wednesday at the age of 87 after suffering a stroke, while serving a sentence for the looting of the musical institution.

Since November, Millet enjoyed the third degree of prison for humanitarian reasons and lived in a residence in Cardedéu (Barcelona).

He died there on Wednesday afternoon, after a few months in which his health had deteriorated alarmingly, according to defense sources.

In June 2020, after the Supreme Court confirmed the sentence of nine years and eight months in prison for a scandal that shook Catalan society, Millet went to prison to serve his sentence.

The former president of the Palau,

Millet arrived at Brians 2 prison by ambulance and has spent more than two and a half years in second grade, the ordinary regime that applies to most prisoners.

During that time he had to be transferred on several occasions to the Terrassa prison hospital due to health problems.

The deterioration of the former president of the Palau increased over time.

From the beginning of his sentence for the Palau case, his lawyers tried to get him a more benign regime.

The Generalitat repeatedly opposed it;

among other things, because Millet never fully assumed his responsibility in the looting of 23 million euros from the cultural institution that he used to enjoy a life of luxury, with trips around the world, together with the former number two of the entity Jordi Montull.

What happened with the wedding of one of his daughters,

The prison situation improved for Millet last November, when the Catalan Government granted him, this time, the third degree prison —which allows him to serve part of the sentence outside of jail— for humanitarian reasons when he suffered a "serious and incurable" illness. .

The prison technicians appreciated a severe deterioration in his state of health and, finally, the Department of Justice agreed to grant him semi-liberty.

Since then, according to defense sources, he has remained in a residence in Cardedéu, just 12 kilometers from what was his mansion, in L'Ametlla del Vallès, which he reformed with all kinds of luxuries thanks to stolen money. of the Palau.

A before and after the looting

The public image of Millet, the powerful, recognized man (the Government awarded him the Creu de Sant Jordi) and well connected with the political spheres, was forever transformed in July 2009. The Mossos d'Esquadra broke into the modernist coliseum in search for signs of irregularities in the management of the Palau.

They found them.

The tortuous judicial investigation made it possible to prove that Millet diverted public and private funds into his pocket and that of Montull, who was his right-hand man during their long tenure at the head of the institution.

During the trial, as a strategy to reduce the foreseeable sentence, both admitted what the anti-corruption prosecutor Emilio Sánchez Ulled, who led the case, had already proven in other ways:

that the Palau had been used as an intermediary for the payment of illegal commissions from Ferrovial to Convergència.

In exchange for a commission, Millet allowed the institution to serve as a front for channeling payments.

The party of Artur Mas, now disappeared, received 6.6 million euros in bribes in exchange for the award of public works from the Generalitat during the last government of Jordi Pujol (1999-2003), according to the sentence.

After a succession of appeals that he ended up losing, Millet had to go to prison.

He remained almost always in the nursing module, with forced visits to the Terrassa prison hospital.

He did not have an easy last few years.

He had to get around in a wheelchair and needed help for almost all the day-to-day tasks.

He had very poor eyesight and hearing and barely related to his fellow ward or prison officers.

He maintained, yes, his addiction to tobacco and tried to smoke secretly in the bathroom, according to various sources.

Isolated, he hardly received visits: those of his lawyers and, occasionally, that of one of his daughters, who lives in the United States.

In addition to mobility problems, Millet suffered from diabetes and kidney failure and, according to defense sources,

His rehabilitation was a failure.

, a treatment program specifically designed for corruption offences,

on two occasions .

It did not help him much because, according to the reports from the prison technicians, he never fully accepted his guilt for the looting of the Palau.

He blamed Montull, with whom he barely spoke;

The relationship deteriorated when Millet saw how his former partner obtained, as early as September 2021 - a year before he would get it - the third degree of prison.

In jail, Millet reportedly enjoyed “a certain sense of impunity”.

To the point that, while he was serving a sentence for the

, began to be investigated in another legal proceeding.

The former president allegedly hid movable property and also the collection of rents to avoid compensating the Palau, which financially has not yet fully recovered from the blow caused by Millet's passage through the institution.

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