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4 January 2015 0.00 h

A tour of political abuse

Valencia, Andalusia and the Balearic Islands are three of Spain's autonomous communities that have been most afflicted by cases of political corruption in recent years

Cases involve obstruction of justice, bribes, and influence peddling

On Oc­to­ber 31 2009, thou­sands of peo­ple in Va­len­cia took part in the first demon­stra­tion or­gan­ised by the group, No a la Cor­rupció, call­ing for a re­newal of democ­racy and the res­ig­na­tion of the then pres­i­dent of the Gen­er­al­i­tat, Fran­cisco Camps. The PP leader of Va­len­cia had spent months at the cen­tre of a media frenzy after he was im­pli­cated in the Gürtel cor­rup­tion case.

Judge Bal­tasar Garzón ac­cused Camps and other party mem­bers in the Va­len­cia gov­ern­ment of ac­cept­ing bribes in the form of gifts from the or­gan­i­sa­tion headed by Fran­cisco Cor­rea, keen to get pub­lic con­tracts worth more than five mil­lion euros. The case ended up in Va­len­cia's high court, while the media pub­lished com­pro­mis­ing in­for­ma­tion, in­clud­ing con­ver­sa­tions be­tween Camps and Cor­rea's right­hand man in Va­len­cia, Álvaro Pérez 'El Big­o­tis'. How­ever, these rev­e­la­tions did not stop Span­ish prime min­is­ter Mar­i­ano Rajoy from al­low­ing Camps and other in­dicted MPs to stand in the May 2011 elec­tions, which the PP won with a land­slide.

Two months later, the pres­i­dent of Va­len­cia re­signed after the case known as the “cas dels vestits” was opened. Camps por­trayed him­self as a mar­tyr mak­ing a vol­un­tary “sac­ri­fice” so that Rajoy could win re-elec­tion. A month and a half later, how­ever, Camps (and the for­mer head of tourism, Rafael Be­toret) was found not guilty. De­spite his ex­on­er­a­tion, the for­mer pres­i­dent dis­ap­peared from front-line pol­i­tics.

Yet, the “cas dels vestits” was just the tip of the ice­berg as far as Va­len­cian in­volve­ment in the Gürtel scan­dal, which in­cluded pos­si­ble il­le­gal fund­ing of the PP. In all, the high court in Va­len­cia recog­nised six dif­fer­ent el­e­ments within the cor­rup­tion in­ves­ti­ga­tion that im­pli­cated Cor­rea and nu­mer­ous oth­ers in the Camp's ad­min­is­tra­tion.

To give an idea of how far the rot went, ex­am­ples such as the il­le­gal fund­ing of the PP can be cited, in which the fal­si­fy­ing of doc­u­ments worth mil­lions in pub­lic build­ing con­tracts al­legedly funded the elec­toral cam­paigns of 2007 and 2008, and also im­pli­cated for­mer Va­len­cia pres­i­dent, Vi­cente Ram­bla.

An­other ex­am­ple is the so-called Fitur case, in­volv­ing ob­struc­tion of jus­tice, bribes, em­bez­zle­ment and in­flu­ence ped­dling in re­la­tion to the Gürtel com­pa­nies, which im­pli­cated the for­mer tourism min­is­ter, Mi­la­grosa Martínez, and the fomer min­is­ter, Angélica Such.

Even the visit of Pope Bene­dict XVI to Va­len­cia in July 2006 did not es­cape being tainted as it be­came clear that Cor­rea's group and RTVV struck a deal to cover the visit. This case brought in­dict­ments for the then di­rec­tor of RTVV, Pedro García, and now, for­mer pres­i­dent, Juan Cotino.

In fact, the dirty strands of the Gürtel case have rid­dled Va­len­cia with in­ves­ti­ga­tions, mostly in­volv­ing Cor­rea's group and the Va­len­cia Gen­er­al­i­tat. This has even led to in­dicted PP del­e­gates con­tin­u­ing to sit in the Va­len­cia par­lia­ment, until the cur­rent pres­i­dent, Al­berto Fabra, drew his now fa­mous “red line”, in­sist­ing on res­ig­na­tions from in­dicted politi­cians, with dif­fer­ing re­sults.

Yet, some sus­pected fig­ures have been able to rely on po­lit­i­cal ma­noeu­vrings in par­lia­ment by the PP to avoid prison. Per­haps the best ex­am­ple is Car­los Fabra. The for­mer pres­i­dent of the Diputació and the PP of Castelló man­aged to evade prison for more than a decade after being sen­tenced to four years in prison for four of­fences. An ap­pli­ca­tion to the cen­tral gov­ern­ment for a re­prieve meant that his sen­tence was sus­pended by the high court while Madrid con­sid­ered for­giv­ing Fabra his sins. In the end, the min­is­ter of jus­tice in­sin­u­ated that the gov­ern­ment was no longer pre­dis­posed to pro­vide re­prieves, and just weeks ago the cab­i­net an­nounced it had turned down the pe­ti­tion.

The lat­est episode in the com­plex web of cor­rup­tion cases af­fect­ing Va­len­cia was the im­pli­ca­tion of the for­mer deputy mayor of Va­len­cia, Al­fonso Grau, in the Nóos case.

De­spite all of this, the País Va­lencià is not the au­tonomous com­mu­nity with the most cases of po­lit­i­cal cor­rup­tion be­cause, ac­cord­ing to 2013 fig­ures from the Con­sejo Gen­eral del Poder Ju­di­cial, An­dalu­sia has dou­ble the num­ber of cases, 656, to the 250 in Va­len­cia.

An­dalu­sia

There is no one sin­gle An­dalu­sian scan­dal, there are many. The cor­rup­tion cases in the au­tonomous com­mu­nity in­volve hun­dreds of in­dict­ments and mil­lions in em­bez­zled funds. Under the um­brella term of Op­er­a­tion Malaya, more than 2.4 bil­lion euros in laun­dered money has so far been seized. It is the mu­nic­i­pal urban scan­dal par ex­cel­lence in Spain. The ring­leader, the for­mer head of town plan­ning in Mar­bella, Juan An­to­nio Roca, was called by one judge “the mayor in the shad­ows”. Three con­sec­u­tive may­ors of the town have been in­dicted (Julián Muñoz, Marisol Yagüe, Tomás Reñones), at one point lead­ing the Span­ish gov­ern­ment to take the un­prece­dented mea­sure of dis­solv­ing the local au­thor­ity until the fol­low­ing elec­tions, in 2007.

Roca had a Miró paint­ing hang­ing in the bath­room of his lux­ury Malaga man­sion, one piece of ev­i­dence seized when the op­er­a­tion began in March 2006. Cur­rently in its third phase, Op­er­a­tion Malaya has since turned up dozens of Pi­casso paint­ings, a pri­vate plane and he­li­copter, a col­lec­tion of 43 an­tique car­riages, a hun­dred or so thor­ough­bred horses, palaces, ho­tels, stuffed ele­phants and hunt­ing tro­phies.

Today there are more than a score of legal pro­ceed­ings un­der­way, pros­e­cut­ing dozens of politi­cians, busi­ness peo­ple and lawyers for of­fences such as money laun­der­ing, ob­struc­tion of jus­tice, in­flu­ence ped­dling, em­bez­zle­ment and so on. Some 50 of the 95 peo­ple ac­cused have been sen­tenced and Roca him­self is cur­rently in prison (for a dif­fer­ent scan­dal) while he and many of his as­so­ci­ates await the ver­dict of the high court. Only re­cently, the pop­u­lar singer Is­abel Pan­toja dodged a prison sen­tence for her part in the scan­dal.

Yet, An­dalu­sia is also af­flicted by an­other cor­rup­tion case: the Ex­pe­di­entes de Reg­u­lación de Ocu­pación, or ERO, which has seen 229 peo­ple ac­cused. This case in­volves the set­ting up and abuse of re­tire­ment funds by the so­cial­ist gov­ern­ment of An­dalu­sia, which has been in power in the com­mu­nity since 1980. While cov­er­age of the 2012 elec­tions fo­cused on the scan­dal, the so­cial­ists man­aged to stave off gov­ern­ment ac­tion thanks to an agree­ment struck with the Izquierda Unida party.

In the next few months, fig­ures such as Pedro Sánchez and Su­sana Díaz could ap­pear be­fore the court, as could for­mer pres­i­dents Manuel Chaves and José An­to­nio Griñán, both still ac­tive in pol­i­tics. The supreme court re­cently began an in­ves­ti­ga­tion into the case to find out who was re­spon­si­ble for set­ting up a fund to pay for the early re­tire­ments of the ERO process, which the in­ves­ti­gat­ing judge be­lieves was part of a sys­tem for re­dis­trib­ut­ing pub­lic money.

So far, dozens of false re­tire­ments have come to light and ev­i­dence that many busi­nesses were pro­vided with pub­lic money on the basis of their con­nec­tions. It is es­ti­mated that the ERO fraud could ac­count for 855 mil­lion euros.

How­ever, at the same time, an­other An­dalu­sian scan­dal threat­ens to leave the other two in the shade: Op­er­a­tion Edu, linked with al­leged fraud­u­lent sub­si­dies worth up to two bil­lion euros sup­pos­edly to fund train­ing courses for the un­em­ployed and in­volv­ing EU money. It is pos­si­ble that the in­ves­ti­ga­tion may have un­cov­ered the biggest ever scan­dal in­volv­ing pub­lic money in Spain, taint­ing in the process unions, busi­ness as­so­ci­a­tions and pri­vate com­pa­nies. So far some 200 peo­ple have been in­ves­ti­gated.

Balearic Is­lands

No dis­cus­sion of the web of cor­rup­tion run­ning through­out Spain would be com­plete with­out look­ing at an­other area that is also under the con­trol of the PP, the Balearic Is­lands. Jaume Matas, who was pres­i­dent of the arch­i­pel­ago from 1996 to 1999 and from 2003 to 2007, en­tered prison on July 28 2014 to serve a 9-month sen­tence for in­flu­ence ped­dling, after his ap­pli­ca­tion to the cen­tral gov­ern­ment for a re­prieve was re­jected. It is the sec­ond time that a min­is­ter from the Balearics has been sent to prison, after José Bar­rionuevo was sen­tenced in 1998 for the kid­nap­ping of Se­gundo Marey.

Yet the sen­tence Matas is serv­ing is only for one of the scan­dals in which he has been im­pli­cated. His cur­rent sen­tence is a re­sult of his role in the Palma Arena case, now near­ing com­ple­tion. Yet, the man who served as en­vi­ron­ment min­is­ter for the Aznar gov­ern­ment in the early 2000s is also to ap­pear be­fore the courts as part of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion into the Nóos scan­dal, which sees him fac­ing a fur­ther five years be­hind bars. The for­mer PP politi­cian is also being in­ves­ti­gated for his al­leged role in il­le­gal party fi­nanc­ing.

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