Spain’s Premier Is Drawn Into a Widening Graft Scandal Gripping His Party
By RAPHAEL MINDER - Published: January 31, 2013
MADRID — Just as Spain’s financial troubles seemed to be diminishing, Prime Minister Mariano
Rajoy has become engulfed in a widening corruption scandal involving payments to the leaders of his Popular Party. A newspaper detailed payouts to members of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s party.
On Thursday, El País, Spain’s leading newspaper, published what it said were excerpts from the party’s financial accounts that showed regular
payouts to leading party members above their official salaries. Mr.
Rajoy first appeared in the ledgers in 1997 and received sums averaging
$34,000 a year through 2008, the newspaper said. The money, it said,
came from “donations” from companies, particularly construction
companies.
Former party treasurers, including Luis Bárcenas, who has been at the
heart of the scandal, are suspected of maintaining the ledgers. Two weeks ago,
the Swiss authorities informed Spanish investigators that Mr. Bárcenas
had deposited as much as $29 million in Swiss bank accounts. El País,
which said it gained access to the Popular Party’s internal accounts
from 1990 to 2008, said that Mr. Rajoy declined to comment on its report
until internal and external audits ordered by him into the party’s
finances were complete. The audits were ordered after news of the Swiss
accounts emerged.
But the report is certain to compound the troubles facing his government
as it tries to navigate Spain’s economic crisis in a climate of
increasing anger and suspicion from the public of all politicians, as
scandals related to Spain’s boom years before the 2008 economic collapse
come to light in all corners of the country.
“For Rajoy, whether the claims about illegal funds prove true or false,
this is incredibly damaging because it weakens not only his party but
his whole government at a very delicate moment in terms of trying to
ensure Spain’s economic recovery,” said Fernando Seco, director of the
Fundación Antares Foro, a policy debate forum in Seville. “If the
Popular Party cannot shed light and justify its funding, we could enter a
new period of political uncertainty.”
On Thursday, María Dolores de Cospedal, the secretary general of the
Popular Party, denied that the party maintained a parallel account,
saying at a news conference in Madrid that “the Popular Party only has
one set of accounts, and it is clean, transparent and submitted to the
official accounting authority.”
El País reported that Ms. de Cospedal was listed in the ledgers as
having twice received payments of about $10,000 in 2008, after she was
confirmed to her post at the party’s convention that June.
During a parliamentary debate on Wednesday, Mr. Rajoy made no mention of
Mr. Bárcenas while he urged lawmakers to agree on a more transparent
system of party financing. But that did nothing to quiet demands for a
fuller explanation.
“Mr. Rajoy will now have to give some kind of clearer explanation,” said
Gaspar Ariño Ortiz, a lawyer in Madrid and former member of Parliament
from the Popular Party.
In the context of a recession and record unemployment, Mr. Ariño Ortiz
said, “citizens who are struggling to make ends meet are seeing that
huge amounts of money have been handled within a Spanish party funding
system that is completely obscure, anonymous and open to corruption.”
Mr. Bárcenas, the former party treasurer, resigned in 2009 after being
indicted in the early stages of a continuing investigation into a scheme
of kickbacks and illegal payments that other Popular Party politicians
are accused of being involved in. He has denied wrongdoing, and through
his lawyer, he denied ever keeping a parallel and undeclared set of
books in order to make payments to politicians.
When he resigned, Mr. Bárcenas took nine boxes of documents with him
from his offices, a trove that stands as an implicit threat to party
officials, commentators say, that if he is taken down in the scandals,
he plans to take others with him. The recent disclosure that Mr.
Bárcenas kept vast sums of money in Switzerland is just one of about 300
corruption investigations being conducted in Spain, many linked to
questionable deals made among bankers, developers and politicians during
the nation’s decade-long property boom. Few have been convicted so far.
The corruption investigations have also tainted Spain’s institutional
fabric, from the monarchy to the Supreme Court, whose chief justice was
forced to resign last year over questionable business expense claims. On
Wednesday, a judge demanded that Iñaki Urdangarin, the son-in-law of
King Juan Carlos, and his former business partner post bond of $11
million as the judiciary deepens its investigation into the possible
embezzlement of millions in public money allocated to sports and tourism
events.
Mr. Urdangarin has not been formally charged, but last year he became
the first member of the royal family to appear in court in modern
Spanish history.
The report in El País added to the disillusionment of many Spaniards,
including some longstanding supporters of the Popular Party. One was
Julian Acevedo Ruiz, a grocery store owner who said he had always voted
for the party, including Mr. Rajoy in 2011.
“I wish that I had never voted,” he said, “because really none of our
politicians are worthy of the trust that we placed in them.”
Mariano Rajoy ha asegurado ante la cúpula del Partido Popular que "es
falso" que haya recibido dinero en B de su partido y ha anunciado que
la próxima semana hará públicas en la página web de la Moncloa sus
declaraciones de la renta para eliminar posibles dudas.
