March 29, 2024

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Passion For Business

Spain’s Targeting of Former Harvard Professor Provokes Trans-Atlantic Outcry

BARCELONA—In just two months, Andreu Mas-Colell, an internationally renowned economist and former Harvard professor, went from making the most of a peaceful retirement in his hometown of Barcelona to struggling with allegations by the Spanish state that could consequence in the seizure of his property.

Mr. Mas-Colell, seventy seven yrs previous, was the financial system minister of Catalonia, a prosperous area in northeast Spain, from 2010 to 2016. He is accused by Spain’s Court docket of Auditors, an administrative human body that oversees public accounts, of taking part in an alleged misuse of millions of euros by allegedly encouraging to market Catalonia’s quest for independence from Spain, which culminated in an unlawful referendum in 2017.

On Tuesday, the Court docket of Auditors imposed a penalty of up to €2.eight million on Mr. Mas-Colell, equivalent to about $three.three million, as aspect of proceedings towards 34 former Catalan officers accused of illegally expending a whole of €5.4 million. The accused have to spend the major penalties in advance of they can enchantment towards them in courtroom.

Mr. Mas-Colell, whose textbook on microeconomics is broadly applied at U.S. universities, has been a professor at Harvard University and the University of California, Berkeley, as perfectly as in Spain. The accusations towards him have sparked an outcry between fellow economists in the U.S., Europe and Asia.

“Those of us who have addressed professor Mas-Colell for a lot of yrs as colleagues, students, and co-authors know that he is a particular person of the utmost integrity,” wrote fifty four notable economists from close to the environment in a letter revealed in the Spanish newspaper El País on June 22. Amid the signatories were 33 Nobel Prize winners, such as Joseph Stiglitz, Amartya Sen and Robert Shiller.