Article by David Eade from Gibraltar's Panorama
After Rajoy and Margallo’s recent attempts to use Gibraltar as a smoke screen to divert attention away from the corruption scandals in Madrid, this week sees the Spanish Prime Minister back in the dock whether he likes it or not.
Not the dockyard of Gibraltar or even Rota but in the dock of the court of public opinion.
He would have been there anyway as this week the investigating judge in the Bárcenas corruption case will be questioning the PP’s secretary generals, past and present. However thanks to the Spanish daily El Mundo, Rajoy is again under suspicion with questions asked over whether he has lied to Spain’s Parliament?
BOMBSHELL
In El Mundo’s Sunday edition it revealed that the former treasurer of the Partido Popular, Luis Bárcenas, who is currently in prison awaiting trial on corruption charges, cashed a cheque from the party in May of last year.
It is a bombshell because Rajoy has categorically stated that at that time, Bárcenas was no longer employed by the party.
The newspaper reproduced a photograph of the pay slip of Bárcenas dated May 2012 which shows that he received the sum of 18,257 euros.
The former PP treasurer is at the centre of a corruption scandal that has engulfed the ruling party with allegations of illegal payments to its politicians and officials.
The discovery of this payment put the embattled Spanish Prime Minister firmly back in the hot seat. He told Congress, Spain’s lower House of Parliament, on August 1 that after he won the general election in November 2011, Bárcenas was no longer with the party.
The Partido Popular has reiterated that Bárcenas was no longer a member of the party from 2010 and that it had refused his request to rejoin after he had temporarily resigned as treasurer the year before. He had been granted leave of absence to try for a Senate seat and then been caught up in the Gürtel corruption case.
However El Mundo believes that after Bárcenas sought to be reincorporated into the Partido Popular an application was made to Social Security for him as a member of the senior management with an indefinite contract for which he would receive 14 payments plus the required legal retentions. His salary was over 255,000 euros a year. On this the Partido Popular had “no comment”.
Bárcenas, who was PP treasurer for two decades, is currently in prison accused of offences against the Spanish tax authority, money laundering, fraud and falsifying documents in the Gürtel corruption case. Gürtel also is centred on the PP and involves allegations that a network of businesses made illicit payments to the party’s politicians in return for contracts.
Bárcenas has testified before the investigating judge that the Partido Popular had hidden accounts in which monies received from companies in the construction industry were placed. He added that leaders of the party between 1991 and 2008 including Rajoy had received payments from these accounts.
Needless to say Rajoy and the rest of the leaders of the PP deny the existence of any hidden accounts or that they received any payments from Bárcenas.
Bárcenas had accumulated around 48 million euros in Swiss bank accounts from his illicit activities.
Rajoy is on record as telling Congress that it had been wrong to have any confidence in Bárcenas but declared his innocence of having any knowledge of or receiving payments from his illegal accounts.
BADLY SHAKEN
The Spanish public’s belief and trust in the political class has been badly shaken over the corruption allegations and the support for the PP has dramatically collapsed.
Rajoy is a leader under suspicion as he leads his country through a catastrophic economic crisis with the looming threat of Cataluña seeking independence.
The recent debacle over Gibraltar has caused ridicule for both Rajoy and Margallo coming in the same week as it was proposed that all Spanish workers should take a 10 per cent pay cut.
On Wednesday the secretary general of the Partido Popular, Maria Dolores de Cospedal, is due to appear before the judge investigating the Bárcenas case. Her predecessors Francisco Álvarez Cascos and Javier Arenas are due to testify this week also. Arenas was the PP’s candidate for the president of Andalucía at the last regional election.
The heat is going to intensify on Rajoy and the PP in the coming weeks and months.
A Transparency International survey showed that 86 per cent of Spaniards believed their politicians to be corrupt. The indications are that the 86 per cent are right.
13-08-13
What are the competing claims over Gibraltar?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23617910
