Twin corruption trials cast a shadow over Spain’s main parties ahead of key elections | World news
Easter will not be a particularly celebratory time for Spain’s two largest political parties. In a twist of judicial fate, both the ruling Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) and the conservative People’s Party (PP) are bracing themselves for the aftermath of two high-profile trials in Madrid this week involving former senior figures from both parties.
Although very different, both situations have the potential to seriously undermine both parties’ claims of zero tolerance for corruption, as voters in Andalusia, Spain’s most populous autonomous region, prepare for regional elections next month. This will be followed by general elections next year.
So what are the situations? So why are these important? The PSOE high command, including Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, will follow events at the high court closely.“Caso Koldo” – is the pseudonym of one of the defendants but is also known as the defendant. “caso mascarillas” (The mask case) started yesterday morning.
Sánchez’s former right-hand man, former transport minister José Luis Ábalos (pictured above), is accused, along with his former deputy Koldo García and businessman Víctor de Aldama, of taking kickbacks from public contracts for sanitary equipment during the Covid pandemic. Ábalos and García, who have denied all charges, face 24 years and 19 years in prison respectively, while Aldama, who has already admitted his role in the alleged plot, faces seven years in prison.
The hearing is one of several scandals that have engulfed the Sánchez administration and its inner circle in recent months. Although the prime minister himself has not been charged with any crime, his wife Begoña Gómez and her brother David Sánchez were investigated due to complaints brought by the pressure group. Manos Limpias (Clean Hands), a self-styled union with far-right connections and a long history of using the courts to pursue political goals.
Gómez is awaiting trial on charges that she used her influence as the prime minister’s wife to get sponsors for a university master’s course she ran and used state funds to pay her assistant to help with personal matters. David Sánchez will appear in court next month over allegations that he was given a special mandate by the socialist-led council of the southwestern city of Badajoz in July 2017, when his brother was the national leader of the PSOE but was not yet prime minister.
Gómez and David Sánchez have denied any wrongdoing. The prime minister said his family were victims of a “harassment and bullying operation” and insisted neither of them had committed any crime.
But the allegation of corruption and nepotism is damaging to a prime minister who took office promising to “eliminate this corruption tension that the People’s Party has brought our politics into.”
It was the issue of corruption that brought Sánchez to power almost eight years ago. Sensing the extent of public outrage after it was revealed in the Gürtel case that the PP had profited from a kickback scheme for illegal contracts, Sánchez gambled on a no-confidence motion to dismiss Mariano Rajoy’s PP government. The gamble paid off and Sánchez has defied expectations of remaining in the Moncloa palace ever since.
The opposition is under fire
Although the PP has tried to capitalize on the cascading scandals and remind the Spaniards of Sánchez’s former closeness to Ábalos, the joyful hand-wringing has been somewhat curtailed by the fact that he too will suffer an embarrassing spell in court in the coming days.
On Monday, Jorge Fernández Díaz, Rajoy’s interior minister from 2011 to 2016, was tried in Spain’s highest criminal court, the Audiencia Nacional, for allegedly spying on former PP treasurer Luis Bárcenas. He threatened to expose corruption within the party.
Fernández Díaz, who has denied any knowledge of the plan to spy on Bárcenas, is accused of embezzlement and invasion of confidentiality and privacy and faces 15 years in prison if convicted.
Fernández Díaz and other former senior interior ministry officials are accused of organizing an extrajudicial operation to spy on Bárcenas after his arrest to ensure that details of the PP’s illegal financing did not come to light. arrested in 2013 on charges of tax evasion and money laundering.
Bárcenas, a close ally of Rajoy who served as PP treasurer until 2009, was eventually sentenced to 33 years in prison in 2018 for fraud and money laundering. He has repeatedly claimed that senior party officials were aware of illegal PP contributions. Inside Interview with El Mundo Over the weekend, Bárcenas said he thought “an espionage operation of this nature could not have been carried out without the knowledge of the highest levels of the party.”
In July 2017, Rajoy became the first Spanish prime minister to testify in a criminal case when he was summoned to testify in the Gürtel case about his time as deputy general secretary of the PP. Rajoy categorically denied any knowledge of an illegal financing racket within the PP and said that his duties during the period in question were solely political, not financial. He and former PP general secretary María Dolores de Cospedal will testify at Fernández Díaz’s trial.
Unsurprisingly, the PP hopes to focus on Ábalos and his partners as the government tries to tout its own successes.
“This is going to be a very long week for us [the government]A PP spokesman said on Monday: “This is a trial that will show in real time who is responsible for a piece of corruption that we Spaniards have experienced.”
Meanwhile, the prime minister, who was appreciated worldwide for his fierce opposition to Donald Trump’s war in Iran, took this opportunity and stated that for the first time in Spain’s history, the number of people paying social security premiums exceeded 22 million.
“You are the ones who raise, run and build this country,” he said. “[You’re] “A team that made history.”
But political messages can only do so much, and much of that depends on what decisions eventually come out of the high court and the Audiencia Nacional. As the events of 2018 show, both the PP and the PSOE know very well how much can depend on the outcome of a single case.
Until next week.
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