http://www.testosteronepit.com/home/2013/3/1/dark-rumblings-of-a-coup-detat-in-spain.html
Dark Rumblings Of A Coup D’État In Spain
FRIDAY, MARCH 1, 2013 AT 8:25PM
Spain is on edge. Unemployment is nearly 26%, youth unemployment over 55%. The government is mired in a corruption scandal. The economy is grinding to a halt. On January 23, the Catalan assembly declared that the region constituted a “sovereign political and legal entity.” A step closer to secession. And then a general gave a speech.
It’s just now percolating to the surface, but it happened on February 6, according to people who attended a conference on the Armed Forces and the Constitution at the Gran Peña, a club in Madrid that is a favorite hangout for retired military officers. The discussion was moderated by José Antonio Fernández Rodera, editor of the military’s magazine, Revista Jurídica Militar. Among the speakers were Ángel Calderón, Chief Justice of the Military Chamber; Pedro González-Trevijano, Chancellor of the King Juan Carlos University; and General Juan Antonio Chicharro, until 2010 commander of the Marine Corps and now in the reserves. About 100 people were in the audience.
There was nothing unusual until General Chicharro spoke. From the outset, he made clear that this wasn’t an impromptu speech. According to various attendees, he apologized; he would have declined the invitation to speak, he said, but the current “separatist-secessionist offensive” in Catalonia obligated him to come forward.
In the armed forces, “there is a general feeling of preoccupation, fear, uncertainty, and confusion” on this topic, he said. He lamented the dismissal of General José Mena in 2006 after he’d publicly suggested that military intervention might be needed to counter Catalonia’s demands for increased autonomy.
He criticized Catalan separatists for their distorted interpretation of the Constitution with regards to secession and offered his own interpretation of two articles: Article 8.1, which charged the Armed Forces with defending Spain and its territorial integrity; and Article 97, which spelled out the subordination of the military to the civilian government. The first was at the hard core of the Constitution, he said. The second was further removed, with less force.
And so, while using conditionals and turning statements into questions, he spun a theory on when the military would be justified in overthrowing the government. The problem would occur, he said, “if those responsible for the defense of the Constitution didn’t behave as their role required.”
He asked his listeners to imagine what would happen if the Popular Party (PP) were to lose its absolute majority in the next general elections, and the Catalan nationalists were to demand, in exchange for their support, a change of the Constitution to undo the doctrine of the “indissoluble unity” of Spain.
“So what do the Armed Forces do?” he wondered, but gave no answer. “The rules are one thing, practice is another,” he said enigmatically. “If the defense mechanism of the constitutional order doesn’t work, by act or omission, then....” He didn’t complete the sentence. “The country is more important than democracy,” he said. “Patriotism is a feeling, and the Constitution is nothing but a law.”
Rousing applause, a standing ovation, cries of “Bravo! Bravo!” The questions from the audience went even further than the General’s speech—until chancellor González-Trevijano cut them off: “The alternative to the constitution is collective suicide,” he said.
When the story began to leak out, Diego López Garrido, the Socialist spokesman in Parliament on defense issues, pressed the Ministry of Defense to take immediate action against the general; he was still subject to the military disciplinary code which frowned upon suggesting coup d’états—in public. And on Thursday, the Ministry said that it has opened apreliminary inquiry to determine what exactly the general had said and if it ran afoul of any laws.
Perhaps warned by the general, the government is taking the hardest possible line against Catalonia’s ambitions to secede. On Thursday, the State Council issued an opinion indicating that there were sufficient legal grounds to dispute the declaration by the Catalan assembly. On Friday, Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy announced that the government would roll out its biggest legal gun. It would take the declaration to the Constitutional Court on the grounds that it violated the Constitution.
The economic nightmare with too many out-of-work restless young people on the streets, the secession of a region, a constitutional crisis in the wings, and dark rumblings by generals combine into a volatile mix. What had started out as a housing bubble that turned into a debt crisis then a broad economic crisis has morphed beyond the economy. It’s gnawing on democracy.
http://www.testosteronepit.com/home/2013/2/15/now-a-vast-political-espionage-scandal-to-top-off-the-sordid.html
Now A Vast Political Espionage Scandal To Top Off The Sordid
Corruption Scandal In Spain
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 2013 AT 7:02PM
Spain just can’t catch a break—a horrid economy with dizzying unemployment, collapsing banks, a prime minister and ruling party tarred by corruption.... Now a political espionage scandal blew up, scattering debris and money laundering allegations far and wide.
Unemployment in Spain was 26% in December, youth unemployment 55%. GDP last quarter dropped for the fifth month in a row (-0.7%), the steepest decline since the financial crisis. Consumer spending plunged 10% in December from prior year—following a hike in the value-added tax. And the budget deficit target of 6.3% (not counting the billions plowed into bailing out the banks) is skidding out of reach.
This leitmotif is accompanied by an elegantly escalating corruption scandal that broke in early February. A classic cash-for-contracts arrangement, where senior politicians received secret payments from business folks who in return were awarded juicy government contracts.
It was documented in handwritten ledgers, involved a €22 million slush fund in Switzerland, and was allegedly run by Luis Bárcenas, the ex-treasurer of the conservative People’s Party (PP), the party of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, whose name appears repeatedly and very inconveniently on the ledgers as recipient [which put him and Chancellor Merkel on the corruption hot seat in Berlin.... The Confidence Crisis In Spain Sends Out Shock Waves].
Add a political espionage scandal. The case blew up in a peculiar manner. According tosources—everything in this case is “according to sources”—Método 3, a detective agency, went out of business not long ago. One of its laid-off employees was an ex-cop, in charge of the data department. When Método 3 couldn’t pay him what it owed him, he appropriated the computers, video and audio recordings, and a bunch of sensitive files. And they’ve shown up at the technical division of the police in Barcelona.
Now “sources” are talking about what’s in this treasure-trove. Apparently Método 3 had been commissioned by a long list of clients to spy on Catalan party leaders, politicians of national parties, judges, prosecutors, executives, and other prominent figures, sources toldLa Vanguardia. One of the recordings was of a lunch meeting at a restaurant in Barcelona in July 2010 between Alicia Sánchez-Camacho, President of the PP in Catalonia, and a woman named María Victoria Álvarez.
Álvarez was desperate and scared. She told Sánchez-Camacho that she’d gone on a road trip to Andorra with her then boyfriend, Pujol Ferrusola. The trunk was loaded with packets of 500-euro notes, which he deposited in a bank account there.
She outlined how Pujol Ferrusola—son of powerbroker Jordi Pujol, leader of the Democratic Convergence of Catalonia (CDC) from 1974 to 2003 and President of Catalonia from 1980 to 2003—was doing his family’s money laundering. She wanted to report him but feared for her life. So she asked Sánchez-Camacho for help.
The Pujol-Ferrusola family has been fingered in a police report that seeped to the surface in 2012. While Jordi Pujol was in power, companies associated with his sons were awarded lucrative contracts allegedly through false bidding. These cases had been investigated at the time, but nothing happened.... Until the recording of a conversation about a trunk full of euros popped up.
On Thursday, Álvarez finally testified before the High Court about what she’d witnessed.
Also on Thursday, Sánchez-Camacho pressed charges with the police and filed a complaint in court against Método 3. She’d found out by reading the papers that her lunch conversation had been recorded—and that the top official of the Catalan Socialist Party (PSC), José Zaragoza, at the time party secretary, had allegedly commissioned Método 3 to do the dirty work.
Interior Minister Jorge Fernández announced an “exhaustive” investigation. “We have a lot of information,” he said ominously. Zaragoza and others accused of anything whatsoever have denied everything.
Sources have told La Vanguardia that the materials are so massive that the police have formed a special team, supported by police units from Madrid, to investigate them. The lunch episode uncovered a web of “unpredictable scope.” The investigation is still in an early stage, sources said, but the client list of Método 3 is long and “delicate,” and includes officials of various political parties and institutions, and the number of people tangled up in it is vast. “This is about top politicians,” said the sources.
These revelations are driving the political elite ever deeper into a malodorous morass just when that same elite is forcefully tightening the belts of the people. Workers have taken pay cuts, social benefits have been trimmed, families have lost their homes, the VAT, which hits everyone, has been jacked up, all to squeeze the maximum from those who still have any juice left. Yet, Spain’s legal system wasn’t designed to root out corruption; and Rajoy, among others, may be thinking that this too shall pass.
http://elpais.com/elpais/2013/03/01/inenglish/1362149934_117552.html
Bárcenas scandal deepens as police investigate alleged theft
Officers turn up at PP headquarters after ex-treasurer files complaint
Judge seeks to include slush fund ledgers in Gürtel inquiry
The escalating conflict between the ruling Popular Party (PP) and its former treasurer, Luis Bárcenas, took a new turn on Friday when national police showed up at PP headquarters to investigate Bárcenas’ claim that two computers and personal papers were stolen from the office he allegedly had there.
Several police officers walked into party headquarters on Madrid’s Génova Street with a warrant on Friday to find out from a high-ranking official whether Bárcenas was truly using the office that he claims the material disappeared from, sources at the Madrid police department confirmed. Other sources said that members of the forensic police inspected the room in question, known as Sala Andalucía.
The PP told the police that “Mr Bárcenas does not have an office at PP headquarters.” The former treasurer, however, has directly accused Alberto Durán, a lawyer and top aide to PP secretary general Dolores de Cospedal, of ordering the theft of his computers and documents. The daily La Gaceta reported on Friday that two workmen had forced the lock on the room and cleaned it out.
This is just the latest in a flurry of complaints, lawsuits and counter-lawsuits being filed by all the parties involved in the expanding Bárcenas case. Alberto Durán earlier filed a lawsuit against Bárcenas and EL PAÍS in Cospedal’s name, while the PP is suing the United Left (IU) for libel after the IU brought action against the PP for serious crimes committed by its leaders, in reference to alleged illegal party financing and dubious cash payments to PP officials, all of which was documented by Bárcenas in secret ledgers that were recently published by EL PAÍS.
Earlier this week it emerged that Bárcenas was suing the PP for unfair dismissal. The party maintains that the ex-treasurer stopped working for the PP in 2010 after being implicated in a parallel scandal, the Gürtel kickbacks-for-contracts case. However, Bárcenas insists that he served as an advisor to the party from March 2010 until January 31 of this year. De Cospedal claimed that after Bárcenas stopped working in 2010 he agreed to draw his severance pay on a monthly basis, with monthly Social Security and tax deducted from it.
On top of all this, it recently transpired that Bárcenas was concealing a personal fortune of around 38 million euros in Swiss bank accounts, the origin of which remains murky. Bárcenas claims this money comes from art sales, consulting work and investments in real estate and the stock market.
In an attempt to start joining up the dots, investigating judge Pablo Ruz, who is in charge of the Gürtel bribes-for-contracts case affecting many PP officials (including Bárcenas, who lost his senator’s seat and was allegedly dismissed by the PP in 2010 over the issue), is trying to establish whether the kickbacks paid out by Gürtel coincide in any way with the sums of money showing up on the secret ledgers that Bárcenas allegedly kept, documenting illegal donations from construction tycoons and cash payouts to PP leaders, including current Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy. These ledgers show as much as 7.5 million euros of opaque money coming into the party between 1990 and 2008.
The ruling party is also planning a collective suit against Bárcenas, who has gone from being its trusted aide to the bane of the PP’s life.
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