Corruption scandal could bring down Spain’s government
13 July 2013
Last week the multimillionaire former treasurer of the ruling Popular Party (PP), Luis Bárcenas, was refused bail and remanded in custody pending trial on charges of corruption and tax evasion. He amassed a fortune worth tens of millions of euros hidden in foreign bank accounts, which were used to channel illegal payments from wealthy businessmen to PP ministers and officials.
This week, Spain’s second-largest circulation newspaper El Mundo published an interview between its editor Pedro J. Ramírez and Bárcenas.
Bárcenas has previously denied that it was his handwriting in a secret ledger detailing the payments, but admitted to Ramírez that he had lied and that he possessed a lot more incriminating documents that “could bring down the government.”
Ramírez revealed, “Luis Bárcenas told me that for at least the past 20 years, the PP has been illegally funded, receiving cash donations from builders and other entrepreneurs who in turn got contracts from the administrations ruled by the party.
“Bárcenas told me that what has hitherto been published is but a small part of the documentation in his possession”, and that there are, Ramirez continued, “other documents and hard drives that prove the systematic illegal financing of party campaigns.” El Mundo commented, “The Luis Bárcenas originals published by El Mundo today pulverise the alibi used until now by the PP to deny the authenticity of its former treasurer’s papers.”
The El Mundo revelations are the latest developments in a scandal which erupted early this year (See: “ Spanish Prime Minister Rajoy implicated in corruption scandal ”) when El País, a daily paper supportive of the opposition Socialist Party (PSOE), first published Bárcenas’ ledgers containing detailed accounts of party finances between 1990 and 2008.
Photocopies of the ledgers were apparently leaked to El País by Jorge Trías Sagnier, a disgruntled former PP deputy and legal consultant to Bárcenas. High Court Judge Pablo Ruz is investigating the ledgers as part of the massive, pre-existing “Gürtel” investigation (See: “ Spain: Popular Party embroiled in corruption scandal ”) in which local and regional PP officials are accused of awarding generous public contracts in return for kickbacks from leading businessmen.
Ruz’s investigation has discovered that Bárcenas possessed papers showing illegal funding of the PP from the day it was created in 1979, following the end of the Franco dictatorship and the transition to democracy. Then it was called the Alianza Popular (Popular Alliance, AP), headed by former Franco minister Manuel Fraga, providing a safe haven for the fascistic elements from the Franco dictatorship.
The Bárcenas ledgers include names and donations, which often violated Spain’s party financing law by exceeding the €60,000 limit from any one individual or company. There are single contributions of up to €250,000 and sums of €400,000 in one year from the same individual. The legal limit was surpassed on more than 30 occasions. In order to conceal their origin Bárcenas broke them down into smaller amounts and entered them as coming from anonymous donors.
Many of the donors were builders or developers on government contracts, including multinational builder OHL, the beneficiary of 215 public works contracts awarded by the PP, and whose chairman Juan Miguel Villar appears to have donated €530,000 to the party. Other construction companies involved are Azvy (€858,000), Sacyr Vallehermoso (€500,000) and Constructura Hispánica (€258,000).
The person who made the largest donations, a total of €1.15 million, is recorded as “José Luis Sánchez”, probably a reference to Andalusian real estate developer José Luis Sánchez Domínguez, chairman and founder of the Sando group. Other illegal donations are from people implicated in the Gürtel case such as Pablo Crespo, a former leading PP figure in Galicia.
From what has been revealed so far the secret party accounts show that millions in regular undeclared and untaxed payouts were handed to high-ranking members of the PP on top of their official salaries, which is forbidden by Spain’s Incompatibilities Law.
Rajoy appears to have received more than €320,000 during this 18-year period, including millions of pesetas (tens of thousands of euros) in illegal payments while he was Minister of Public Administration in José María Aznar’s PP government between 1997 and 1999.
Aznar also received monthly “bonuses”. According to a report sent by the Tax Agency to Judge Ruz, Aznar received 2.7 million pesetas (€16,755) in three payments after he was sworn in as prime minister in May 1996—in addition to his official salary of 12 million pesetas (€72,500) plus housing and maintenance allowances.
At least six other PP officials are being investigated for receiving “bonus” envelopes from the party over the course of several years. Congressional Deputy Eugenio Nasarre admitted to having received money, whilst Bárcenas was present, for his foundation, the Fundación Humanismo y Democracia (Humanism and Democracy Foundation), including two payments of €30,000 and €40,000 and bonuses of €1,800 a month. Nasarre is quoted as saying that the payment of bonuses was “generalized” and it was “normal” for them to be recorded as “anonymous”. The “bonus” payments received by Nasarre are about double the amount of what a Spanish worker would consider a good wage.
During his 30 years’ work for the PP, Bárcenas amassed and concealed a fortune estimated at €48 million, most of which ended up in Swiss bank accounts. He claims that none of this money came from PP donations or kickbacks but from overseas investments, real estate and art dealings, for which he is facing charges of bribery, fraud, tampering with evidence and cover-ups. He has been under investigation in the Gürtel probe since 2009.
Although Bárcenas stepped down as PP treasurer in 2010, he continued to be paid €250,000 a year—the highest salary paid by the party to any of its members—as a political consultant until January 31, the day El País published its revelations.
Now Bárcenas, according to one PP official, is the “caged bird about to sing”. Other PP leaders have expressed “great concern” that the Barcenas case “is doing terrible damage to the party and society itself”. The fact that El Mundo, which is sympathetic to the right-wing PP, publishes the Bárcenas interview is a sign that the knives are out to get the Rajoy leadership and replace it with a more hardline faction headed by someone like Esperanza Aguirre, former PP president of the Madrid region and a highly influential figure on the Spanish right. She openly criticized PP Secretary General María Dolores de Cospedal for failing to defuse the corruption scandal and to sue Bárcenas earlier on.
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/07/13/spai-j13.html
Photo: Belgian Deputy Prime Minister and Health Minister Laurette Onkelinx who is president of the French-speaking Socialists in Brussels. On June, 3th 2011 the newspaper Belang van Limburg wrote that ‘Deputy Prime Minister Laurette Onkelinx will possibly be the new Prime Minister of Brussels’.
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Spain’s Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy Threatened By Corruption Scandal
7/09/2013
MADRID, July 9 (Reuters) – Spain’s Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy may take a pounding from fresh corruption allegations against his People’s Party but the government is strong enough to ride the storm, analysts and sources say.
A Spanish newspaper said on Tuesday it had handed over handwritten documents to the High Court which it said were ledger entries showing payments from an illicit slush fund run by the PP to party leaders, including Rajoy.
El Mundo newspaper splashed colour photocopies of the ledger entries on the front page of Tuesday’s paper, the latest installment in a long-running corruption scandal which has damaged the government’s credibility as it seeks to bring a sickly economy back to health.
“It obviously doesn’t help the Spanish brand,” Foreign Affairs Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo said on Tuesday when asked about the latest twist in the scandal.
Spain’s ruling PP party and the government repeated denials that party members had ever received illegal cash.
But the scandal has refused to go away since El Pais newspaper published photocopied excerpts of the same ledger in January. It has angered Spaniards suffering a long-running recession, high unemployment and public spending cuts.
El Mundo did not say how it had got its hands on the documents, but the editor, Pedro Ramirez, published on Sunday an interview with the alleged author of the ledger entries and operator of the slush fund – former PP treasurer Luis Barcenas, currently in custody as the High Court continues a pre-trial investigation into corruption charges against him.
CASH AND CIGARS
The newspaper said payments amounting to tens of thousands of euros were delivered to party leaders, in Rajoy’s case sometimes concealed in a box of cigars.
The affair has not affected the premium investors demand to hold Spanish debt rather than the German benchmark, a measure of perceived political risk. But top government officials acknowledge that the corruption allegations are damaging the country’s image abroad.
Senior PP members, speaking on condition of anonymity, also concede that many within the party fear they will lose European elections in 2014 and local and general elections in 2015. They would like to see Rajoy, known for his caution, fight back more strongly against the allegations.
Support for the PP has crumbled to 23 percent from 45 percent at the time of the November 2011 general election, a poll published on Sunday in El Pais showed.
While conceding in private that the first corruption allegations in January slowed down the pace of government reforms, PP officials insist Rajoy’s leadership is not seriously questioned within the party.
STRONG MAJORITY
The government also retains a strong parliamentary majority which it has used on several occasions to block other parties’ demands for explanations on the Barcenas case.
The opposition Socialist party has failed to capitalise on the PP’s falling popularity, as it fights its own corruption scandal in the Socialist-controlled region of Andalusia. Just 21.6 percent of those surveyed in the El Pais poll said they would vote for the opposition party.
While the Barcenas scandal is commonly cited in banners at street protests, the numbers demonstrating are smaller than they were at the birth of the ‘indignados’ youth movement in May 2011.
“This is the latest of many factors to erode the image of the government in the eyes of the public,” said Juan Carlos Rodriguez, analyst at political consultancy Analistas Socio-Politicos.
“I don’t think it will harm their electoral prospects much, because they are so low it’s almost impossible for them to fall further,” he added. “The government has a more than sufficient majority to withstand this.”
Rajoy and his government can also count on the tortuous procedures of the Spanish court system to resist pressure to step down, knowing that cases often take many years to reach trial, let alone a verdict.
The first Barcenas case involves a group of businessmen suspected of putting on campaign rallies for the PP in exchange for kickbacks. The second centres on the slush fund reported to have taken donations from companies in return for contracts in regions governed by the PP, and – according to the allegations which the party and government deny – to have distributed part of them to party leaders in cash.
Barcenas, who had previously denied the handwriting in the ledger was his, said in Sunday’s El Mundo interview that he had lied and it was indeed his script. He said the photocopies published by El Pais were a fraction of the documents he had that detailed illegal financing of the party.
The public prosecutor’s office said on Monday it would recommend High Court investigating Judge Pablo Ruz call Barcenas to testify again. He is charged with money laundering, bribery, tax fraud and other crimes. (Additional reporting by Sarah Morris, Raquel Castillo, Inmaculada Sanz and Esther Poveda; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/09/spain-prime-minister-mariano-rajoy-corruption_n_3567436.html
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