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Spain’s Premier Expected to Speak on Graft Scandal

By RAPHAEL MINDER - Published: February 1, 2013 

SEVILLE, SPAIN — Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy is expected to break his silence on Saturday over a report this week alleging that he and other conservative politicians had received regular payments from a previously undisclosed account run by treasurers of his Popular Party.
According to the newspaper El País, the payments were made to Mr. Rajoy and other leading party members from 1990 to 2008 — when Spain’s construction bubble burst — via a slush fund administered by former party treasurers, including Luis Bárcenas, whom Swiss authorities recently reported to have maintained as much as €22 million, or $29 million, in Swiss bank accounts.
On Friday, El País reported that more than €5 million of the €7.5 million listed as payments to party leaders in accounting ledgers prepared by Mr. Bárcenas, copies of which were published by the newspaper, may have exceeded the legal limits under the law that was in effect at the time.

Spain’s attorney general, Eduardo Torres-Dulce, said late Thursday that the judiciary was considering incorporating the bookkeeping evidence into an ongoing investigation into possible kickbacks received by conservative politicians.

At the same time, some junior conservative politicians broke ranks with the party leadership on Friday, with two of them resigning in protest over the latest revelations. Eduardo Junquera said he would leave the administration of the city hall in Gijón, in northern Spain, to show his “radical rejection of the pitiful, shameful and serious facts” relating to the activities of senior members of his Popular Party.

Mr. Rajoy also faced rising demands from his parliamentary opponents on the left to provide an explanation. The Socialist opposition leader, Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba, repeated calls that Mr. Rajoy appear — “Now, right now” — before Congress to explain his role in the scandal.

“What is under judgment today is the name of the prime minister of Spain,” Mr. Rubalcaba said. “He needs to come out and clarify all of this, now.”

Instead, Mr. Rajoy has convened an extraordinary meeting of his Popular Party’s executive committee, scheduled for Saturday, when he is expected to make his first statement about the allegations. Speaking after a weekly cabinet meeting Friday, Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría, the deputy prime minister, said that Mr. Rajoy would “give his opinion” about the corruption scandal and provide “explanations” at that time.

Ms. Sáenz de Santamaria defended Mr. Rajoy’s track record, saying that he had always displayed “exemplary conduct.” She also denied suggestions that the scandal could weaken the government at a time when the economy remains bogged down in a recession that has pushed the jobless rate above 25 percent.

The latest accusations, however, have fueled the anger of many citizens who have been forced to tighten their belts because of Mr. Rajoy’s austerity program while corruption scandals related to Spain’s boom years continue to unfurl around the country. There is plenty of anger to go around, as Spain’s other main parties are mired in several corruption scandals of their own.

Even as some left-wing politicians called this week for an early general election in response to the report, Mr. Rajoy, who took office in December 2011 after his Popular Party trounced the Socialists, still holds one of the strongest parliamentary majorities in Europe.

At the same time, despite sinking in opinion polls over the past year because of his tax hikes and other broken electoral pledges, Mr. Rajoy has also kept a tight control on his Popular Party and faces no obvious internal rival. Last September, Esperanza Aguirre — a one-time challenger to Mr. Rajoy — unexpectedly resigned as head of the regional government of Madrid for personal reasons.