MADRID — The sense of scandal surrounding Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has crested yet again, after another week of allegations and denials in which the former treasurer of his Popular Party continued to drip-feed the media glimpses of ledgers that appear to show that Spain’s leadership enriched itself for years with a secret slush fund.
But while the charge may be simple enough, the case is not. Having previously withheld information from the courts about secret Swiss accounts, the former treasurer, Luis Bárcenas, who now sits in prison, seems less than fully credible, and the courts incapable of digging to the bottom on the matter with real speed.
The result is less a crisis for Mr. Rajoy — though he is certainly damaged, polls show — than one for Spain, its national morale and the credibility of its institutions, with all the risk that the steady drumbeat of allegations will deny recession-hit Spain strong leadership and distract the government from pressing economic concerns as the scandal unspools for years, analysts say.
In fact, Mr. Rajoy’s best defense may be to stonewall and string out the corruption case beyond the end of his scheduled mandate in 2015 and the next election. Given Spain’s overburdened courts, that should not be hard to do.
“Rajoy is the ultimate resistance fighter and he has clearly decided that time will play in his government’s favor,” said José Ignacio Torreblanca, a political columnist and head of the Spanish office of the European Council on Foreign Relations, a research group.
Still, Mr. Torreblanca suggested that Mr. Rajoy was making “a big mistake” if he resorted to stalling tactics in an attempt to keep political pressure at a minimum.
“A prime minister should not only ask people to trust him but instead present a credible story about exactly what happened when faced with such accusations,” Mr. Torreblanca said.
This week, however, the Popular Party rejected a call from opposition parties for Mr. Rajoy to appear in Parliament and explain exactly how the party’s finances had been managed by Mr. Bárcenas.
Meanwhile, prosecutors started naming senior Popular Party officials whom they want to appear as witnesses in the case, led by María Dolores de Cospedal, the secretary general of the party.
Mr. Bárcenas was first subpoenaed in 2009, as part of what then appeared to be a mundane graft investigation into whether a group of businessmen had bribes to receive contracts from conservative mayors and regional politicians.
He denied at the time ever having had money in Switzerland. Since January, investigators have unearthed at least €47 million, or $61.4 million, that he allegedly stashed offshore, in Switzerland but also possibly in the United States and other countries.
Mr. Bárcenas is next scheduled in court on Monday, and with each appearance speculation mounts that he will turn on his former party colleagues, as they turn on him. Mr. Bárcenas reportedly left his job as treasurer in 2009 with a trove of documents.
This week, the newspaper El Mundo published ledgers that it claimed were the party’s parallel financial accounts, mirroring allegations made in late January by another Spanish paper, El País. Mr. Bárcenas is being held in a prison outside Madrid since a court judged him to be a flight risk in June. After visiting his friend on Monday, Miguel Duran, a lawyer, told RAC1 radio that Mr. Bárcenas had told him “interesting things.”
“He has enough information to make the government fall,” Mr. Duran said ominously. Mr. Rajoy and other senior party officials have denied wrongdoing, as has Mr. Bárcenas. Increasingly the scandal boils down to their word against his.
Senior party officials have now sought to isolate and even disparage their former colleague, at the risk that Mr. Bárcenas will become even looser with his years of accumulated knowledge of the inner workings of the Popular Party.
By Thursday, Mr. Bárcenas was being called “a delinquent” by Alfonso Alonso, the party’s parliamentary spokesman, “for whom lying has become a way of life.” At the same time, Mr. Alonso acknowledged that “there has been a corruption ring, which is what we want the judiciary to clarify.”
In February, in contrast, when Mr. Rajoy made a weekend television address to deny the existence of a slush fund, he made no specific mention of Mr. Bárcenas and his Swiss money and instead defended the fiscal rectitude of all his party colleagues.
“All our tax contributions have been made within the strictest legality over all these years,” Mr. Rajoy said at the time.Mr. Alonso’s portrayal of Mr. Bárcenas was “a major change in the party discourse and some form of reality check,” said José María de Areilza, a professor of law at the Esade business school in Madrid. It also showed how quickly the stakes in the case have mounted, he said.
With a bullet-proof majority in Parliament and elections not due until 2015, Mr. Rajoy is in little danger of being nudged from power. But the persistent drumbeat of allegations has pushed him and his inner circle toward blanket denials that leave them little room for maneuver if Mr. Barcenas’s allegations eventually stand up.
Underlining the severity of the slush fund allegations against the Popular Party, the financial crimes unit of the Spanish police released in May a report in which it said that it had identified 19 of the fund’s corporate donors, which received more than €12 billion worth of public contracts from conservative politicians over a decade.
Proving any illegal party funding scheme is likely to be an uphill struggle given the murkiness of the rules governing the financing of Spanish parties — something that Mr. Rajoy’s government is in the process of tightening. But the questions swirling around the party’s finances have already helped sink Mr. Rajoy’s popularity to record lows.
Mr. Rajoy’s government has also faced mass demonstrations, as citizens blame its austerity push for their worsening conditions and a record unemployment rate of 27 percent.
Only 23 percent of respondents would now vote for the Popular Party, according to a survey by Metroscopia, a pollster, and published by El País last Sunday, hovering near the lowest since Mr. Rajoy came to power in November 2011.
Meanwhile, 86 percent of those surveyed said that they did not trust Mr. Rajoy, according to Metroscopia.
Still, the Socialists and other parties continue to trail the Popular Party, according to Metroscopia’s latest poll, showing the extent and depth of the discontent and mistrust in Spain, as politicians, the monarchy and almost every other institution have become entangled in the web of fraud investigations, many of them related to building contracts awarded before the bursting of Spain’s construction bubble in 2008.
nytimes.com
But while the charge may be simple enough, the case is not. Having previously withheld information from the courts about secret Swiss accounts, the former treasurer, Luis Bárcenas, who now sits in prison, seems less than fully credible, and the courts incapable of digging to the bottom on the matter with real speed.
The result is less a crisis for Mr. Rajoy — though he is certainly damaged, polls show — than one for Spain, its national morale and the credibility of its institutions, with all the risk that the steady drumbeat of allegations will deny recession-hit Spain strong leadership and distract the government from pressing economic concerns as the scandal unspools for years, analysts say.
In fact, Mr. Rajoy’s best defense may be to stonewall and string out the corruption case beyond the end of his scheduled mandate in 2015 and the next election. Given Spain’s overburdened courts, that should not be hard to do.
“Rajoy is the ultimate resistance fighter and he has clearly decided that time will play in his government’s favor,” said José Ignacio Torreblanca, a political columnist and head of the Spanish office of the European Council on Foreign Relations, a research group.
Still, Mr. Torreblanca suggested that Mr. Rajoy was making “a big mistake” if he resorted to stalling tactics in an attempt to keep political pressure at a minimum.
“A prime minister should not only ask people to trust him but instead present a credible story about exactly what happened when faced with such accusations,” Mr. Torreblanca said.
This week, however, the Popular Party rejected a call from opposition parties for Mr. Rajoy to appear in Parliament and explain exactly how the party’s finances had been managed by Mr. Bárcenas.
Meanwhile, prosecutors started naming senior Popular Party officials whom they want to appear as witnesses in the case, led by María Dolores de Cospedal, the secretary general of the party.
Mr. Bárcenas was first subpoenaed in 2009, as part of what then appeared to be a mundane graft investigation into whether a group of businessmen had bribes to receive contracts from conservative mayors and regional politicians.
He denied at the time ever having had money in Switzerland. Since January, investigators have unearthed at least €47 million, or $61.4 million, that he allegedly stashed offshore, in Switzerland but also possibly in the United States and other countries.
Mr. Bárcenas is next scheduled in court on Monday, and with each appearance speculation mounts that he will turn on his former party colleagues, as they turn on him. Mr. Bárcenas reportedly left his job as treasurer in 2009 with a trove of documents.
This week, the newspaper El Mundo published ledgers that it claimed were the party’s parallel financial accounts, mirroring allegations made in late January by another Spanish paper, El País. Mr. Bárcenas is being held in a prison outside Madrid since a court judged him to be a flight risk in June. After visiting his friend on Monday, Miguel Duran, a lawyer, told RAC1 radio that Mr. Bárcenas had told him “interesting things.”
“He has enough information to make the government fall,” Mr. Duran said ominously. Mr. Rajoy and other senior party officials have denied wrongdoing, as has Mr. Bárcenas. Increasingly the scandal boils down to their word against his.
Senior party officials have now sought to isolate and even disparage their former colleague, at the risk that Mr. Bárcenas will become even looser with his years of accumulated knowledge of the inner workings of the Popular Party.
By Thursday, Mr. Bárcenas was being called “a delinquent” by Alfonso Alonso, the party’s parliamentary spokesman, “for whom lying has become a way of life.” At the same time, Mr. Alonso acknowledged that “there has been a corruption ring, which is what we want the judiciary to clarify.”
In February, in contrast, when Mr. Rajoy made a weekend television address to deny the existence of a slush fund, he made no specific mention of Mr. Bárcenas and his Swiss money and instead defended the fiscal rectitude of all his party colleagues.
“All our tax contributions have been made within the strictest legality over all these years,” Mr. Rajoy said at the time.Mr. Alonso’s portrayal of Mr. Bárcenas was “a major change in the party discourse and some form of reality check,” said José María de Areilza, a professor of law at the Esade business school in Madrid. It also showed how quickly the stakes in the case have mounted, he said.
With a bullet-proof majority in Parliament and elections not due until 2015, Mr. Rajoy is in little danger of being nudged from power. But the persistent drumbeat of allegations has pushed him and his inner circle toward blanket denials that leave them little room for maneuver if Mr. Barcenas’s allegations eventually stand up.
Underlining the severity of the slush fund allegations against the Popular Party, the financial crimes unit of the Spanish police released in May a report in which it said that it had identified 19 of the fund’s corporate donors, which received more than €12 billion worth of public contracts from conservative politicians over a decade.
Proving any illegal party funding scheme is likely to be an uphill struggle given the murkiness of the rules governing the financing of Spanish parties — something that Mr. Rajoy’s government is in the process of tightening. But the questions swirling around the party’s finances have already helped sink Mr. Rajoy’s popularity to record lows.
Mr. Rajoy’s government has also faced mass demonstrations, as citizens blame its austerity push for their worsening conditions and a record unemployment rate of 27 percent.
Only 23 percent of respondents would now vote for the Popular Party, according to a survey by Metroscopia, a pollster, and published by El País last Sunday, hovering near the lowest since Mr. Rajoy came to power in November 2011.
Meanwhile, 86 percent of those surveyed said that they did not trust Mr. Rajoy, according to Metroscopia.
Still, the Socialists and other parties continue to trail the Popular Party, according to Metroscopia’s latest poll, showing the extent and depth of the discontent and mistrust in Spain, as politicians, the monarchy and almost every other institution have become entangled in the web of fraud investigations, many of them related to building contracts awarded before the bursting of Spain’s construction bubble in 2008.
nytimes.com
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