http://elpais.com/elpais/2013/01/31/inenglish/1359653307_923438.html
http://www.businessinsider.com/el-pais-bombshell-rocks-spanish-leaders-2013-1
Spanish prime minister Mariano Rajoy and his government have been rocked today by documents published in El Pais that appear to show his party receiving a large amount of "secret" donations.
Socialist leader calls on PM to face Congress over payment scandal
“What is under judgment today is the name of the prime minister of Spain,” says Rubalcaba
PP secretary general "has convinced absolutely nobody,” he adds
Rubalcaba speaks to the press on Thursday in Tenerife. / RAMÓN DE LA ROCHA (EFE)
For the second time since the Luis Bárcenas scandal began to unfold, main opposition Socialist leader Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba has challenged Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy to appear in front of Congress to explain his role in the scandal, which is engulfing the ruling Popular Party. Rajoy should, Rubalcaba said, appear “Now. Right now.”
As the prime minister called an extraordinary party committee meeting for this Saturday, the parliamentary left was jointly condemning the ledgers published by EL PAÍS on Thursday, which purportedly show irregular payments made to high-ranking officials sourced from donations to the PP from construction companies linked to the Gürtel corruption investigation.
“What is under judgment today is the name of the prime minister of Spain,” said Rubalcaba. “He needs to come out and clarify all of this, now.”
The Socialist leader added that should the claims of side payments made to Rajoy and other leading PP officials over several years be “confirmed,” it will be “simply scandalous and implicate the prime minister.”
In response to PP secretary general María Dolores de Cospedal’s press conference on Thursday, in which she publicly denied knowledge of any payments made by former party treasurers Bárcenas and Álvaro Lapuerta, Rubalcaba said her credibility was “zero” and that “she had convinced absolutely nobody.”
“She said that she stopped [the payments]. Everybody knew that what she was trying to say was that she had no knowledge of what had happened before she arrived [in her post]. Today she has changed [her story]; today she said that there were no payments before then. It is not very believable.”
Rajoy, Rubalcaba continued, should face Congress immediately to answer two questions: “‘Were these payments made? And if so, with taxed or untaxed funds?’ These are two simple questions. The prime minister needs to respond because we are dealing with a critical situation. It is becoming unbearable. Spain is on the front page of all the major international newspapers.”
United Left leader Cayo Lara – flanked by Congressional deputy Joan Coscubiela of the Initiative for Catalonia Greens and Chesús Yuste of the Chunta Aragonesista, the parties that together form the Plural Left parliamentary bloc – went even further: “If the data presented by EL PAÍS is confirmed, Mariano Rajoy must resign and immediately call a general election because we are facing a crisis in our democratic system.”
Two simultaneous petitions emerged from the minor opposition parties in parliament: for the creation of an investigative commission and the calling of early elections, and an emergency session in Congress to debate corruption in Spain. The governing partner of the ruling CiU coalition in Catalonia, ERC, and the Basque nationalist grouping Amaiur, backed the other parties’ position. “The two-party system is in crisis because we have already had a case of illegal financing of the PSOE, Filesa, and now the PP, starting with the Gürtel case,” said Lara.
ERC congressional spokesman Alfred Bosch said: “Not all the parties are corrupt and have their hands in the till, but all the parties have an obligation to clean up [politics] because Ali Baba’s cave exists. All corruption should be investigated, from the last councilor to the head of state.”
The PSOE, the Basque Nationalist Party and UPyD have not yet decided whether to add their signatures to the petition calling for Rajoy’s resignation and early elections.
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http://elpais.com/elpais/2013/01/25/inenglish/1359140681_894494.html
Rajoy dodges questions about Bárcenas and PP cash donations on eve of summit
Anti-corruption watchdog tells Spanish parties to follow UN transparency guidelines
EL PAÍS Madrid 25 ENE 2013 - 20:04 CET1
As he prepares for a major summit with Latin American and Caribbean leaders set to begin Saturday in Chile, Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy continues to be dogged by questions surrounding corruption back home.
On Friday at a joint press conference with Chilean President Sebastián Piñera, the prime minister was bombarded with questions about the Popular Party’s (PP) former treasurer Luis Bárcenas and allegations that the official handed out cash bonuses to top leaders along with their regular salaries.
“There is not anything more unfair than a generalization that all politicians are corrupt when, in fact, the majority of them are efficient and honorable,” Rajoy said.
Dodging the specifics about the Bárcenas internal inquiry, which he ordered on Monday, he said the PP wants to be a “transparent” party so that there “can never be a shadow of a doubt about its credibility.”
Earlier in the day, in a radio interview with a Spanish network, Rajoy said he could not remember the last time he spoke with Bárcenas, who is under court investigation for tax fraud and allegedly having 22 million euros stashed away in Switzerland.
The former party treasurer and finance manager, who temporarily stepped down in 2009 before making it permanent the next year, still had an office inside PP headquarters up until this month.
Rajoy didn’t want to either confirm or deny that some in his party received cash bonuses that, according to reports, amounted to up to 15,000 euros in some cases and were given out between 1989 and 2009 by Bárcenas and his predecessor Álvaro Lapuerta. “When justice is handed down, then others will have to respect its decisions.”
The results of an exhaustive internal inquiry that will be carried out by current treasurer Carmen Navarro will be handed over to an auditing firm for review.
Meanwhile, the Berlin-based anti-corruption watchdog, Transparency International, on Friday advised Spanish political parties to follow the guidelines in the UN Convention against Corruption, which calls for more openness in the funding of political organizations and candidate campaigns in Spain.
“Clearly Spanish political parties need to be more accountable towards the public opinion and they have to disclose properly their funding and how they spend it,” wrote Valentina Rigamonti, TI’s senior regional Western Europe coordinator for the organization’s Europe Central Asia Department.
Parties in Spain receive up to 90 percent of their funding from the government.
Rigamonti wrote that the PP’s proposed Law on Transparency, Access to Information and Good Governance “is an excellent opportunity for political parties to show commitment in the fight against corruption” but it would only cover public institutions.
“Should political parties voluntarily place themselves under the scrutiny of the newly proposed law, a strong message of accountability would be sent to the public,” she wrote.
http://www.businessinsider.com/el-pais-bombshell-rocks-spanish-leaders-2013-1
Spanish Government Rocked By 'Secret' Accounts That Allegedly Show Massive Corruption
El Pais claims that the documents show a series of payments from well known businessmen to the conservative People’s Party for more than a decade, with the last payment in 2009.
According to the Guardian, one document appears to show Rajoy himself receiving payments totaling €250,000 ($340,000) that had been hidden from tax authorities.
The scandal revolves around former treasurer Luis Bárcenas, who is under investigation for allegedly having €22 million ($30 million) in a Swiss bank account. Bárcenas is alleged to have kept a double accounting system for the party to hide the payments.
For the Spanish government this timing is bad — CNN notes that just one day ago there was a parliamentary debate over how to stop corruption. The country is currently suffering from one of the worst unemployment rates in Europe, and has seen widespread protests on the streets of its major cities.
Two senior PP party members have admitted that at least some of the payments are true, but the party itself is denying the report, the Guardian reports.
"The party vehemently denies the contents of these documents," party secretary general Maria Dolores de Cospedal said, adding that they may sue El Pais. "I have spoken to the prime minister and he is calm."
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