Finding Treasure In The Dark

How about this little lot?

Luxury materials, such as oakwood floors and bathrooms of marble; thirty paintings and other art works; leading brands of audio and visual equipment, including eight televisions; a hundred or so handbags; 150 or so suits; 50 pairs of shoes.

And then this lot.

Polished granite kitchen; more marble in bathrooms; sound-proofing; anti-vapour systems; a hydromassage system; towel radiators in all bathrooms; ambient thermostat for heating and hot water; air-conditioning for cooling and heating; parabolic antenna and television in the lounge, kitchen and bedrooms; TV sockets in the lounge, kitchen and bedrooms; various security and alarm systems; safe; electronic video entrance system; automatic shutters.

For the most part, sounds like an estate agent's sales pitch for some luxury accommodation. None of it necessarily that unusual. Only when you add on some other items, like documents relating to alleged cases of corruption by some well-known politicians and a copy of a "denuncia" by the wife of one particular well-known politician, accused of mistreating her, do you begin to understand to whom all this relates. Or maybe you don't. You might of course have been fooled by the shoes. No it's not Imelda Marcos. It is the ex-president of the Balearic Government and his wife. The first list relates to the so-called "palacete" in Palma, the home of Jaume Matas and missus, where these documents were discovered; the second to an apartment in Madrid. Where the former is concerned, there is another list, a lengthy one of various renovations that were carried out, mostly by a constructor from Sa Pobla. The total cost of the renovations at the palacete, it is said, amount to some 2 million euros. There are, apparently, invoices for a mere 5% of them.

These inventories, itemised in different reports from the "Diario", have come to light as the consequence of police raids on the Matas's properties. In an operation named "Buckingham" (not sure why, maybe it has to do with the "palacete"), the Guardia, investigating accusations of corruption levelled against Matas, have been turning over the residences and bringing in art and architectural experts to assist in coming up with the values.

Now you might say, well, he's a politician and he probably earned a fair wedge. Possibly so, but one presumes that the anti-corruption squad believes that there might be a slight discrepancy between income and property value, to say nothing of those invoices which total only 92,000 euros.

Matas is under suspicion with regard to a corruption case involving the Palma Arena velodrome, one of any number of major works that were initiated during his presidency from 2003 to 2007. It may be interesting to note that Matas, originally, was a tax inspector, while he was once the head of the Hacienda in the Balearics, during which time there was a previous spate of corruption cases.

The police action will of course continue, but if it turns out that Matas is indeed guilty, and let it be stressed that he is still innocent, then the repercussions could be enormous. This is the former president of the regional government, after all, one sitting on what, for the investigators, is a treasure trove of discovery. The worst of the repercussions would be what it says about the practice of local democracy, about the system of favours and about the sheer endemic nature of dishonesty in local society. Matas is just the latest, but if he has done wrong, he would be the biggest of the local political fish, about which there is more than a hint of the one-time sham system of democracy that operated in Spain in the nineteenth century, that of the "cacique", the political boss who delivered the required results as part of a system of favours given and received.

There's nothing new under a Spanish sun.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - The Proclaimers, "Letter From America", http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-OzdiaJZkw. The series was "Tutti Frutti" - Robbie Coltrane, Emma Thompson, Richard Wilson. Today's title - daft line from a group that specialised in daft lyrics.

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