Down In The Sewer: The rubbish corruption case

Here we go again. When I suggested that you shouldn't bet against the president of the Council of Mallorca offering a message about corruption at the end of 2011, I hadn't expected that a case would arise quite so quickly to support such a message. But it has.

Operación Cloaca. A cloaca is Latin for a sewer. Appropriate, you might think. "Cases of corruption keep coming to the surface with the regularity with which malodour filters out of a sewer cover." Hmm. This was what I said in "The Year Of Living Corruptly" (30 December).

The case involves allegations of false accounting in respect of waste-collection services across Mallorca. Implicated are businesspeople operating such services, the former director of waste management at the environment department of the Council of Mallorca and an economist and an engineer from the council.

The amount of money that is being said to have been "diverted" is staggering, anything up to 3.5 million euros, and the whole thing centres on what was going on at the waste-management division within the environment department at the council. The former councillor for environment was Catalina Julve, now the spokesperson for the Unió Mallorquina (UM) party.

There is an unfortunate familiarity about all this. The UM. One of those implicated, Simón Galmés, said to have charged a monthly 9,000 euros for work not undertaken, is a member of the Alianza Libre de Manacor-UM. It is also being said that, thanks to a friendship with Miguel Riera, the former mayor of Manacor and himself in the ALM-UM, Galmés's firm got the gig to be contracted to perform the inspection of waste. Riera, now no longer with us, was also the boss of the environment department before Julve. False invoices stopped being raised, it is further alleged, only once the UM was kicked out of governmental posts by the president of the regional government following the various corruption cases the party faced.

Of the various scandals that have erupted over the past couple of years, this one has the feeling of something different. It is less familiar in one respect. Though these scandals have involved the diversion of public funds, they have been at arm's length, away from ordinary householders and businesses.

This one is different because those ordinary householders and businesses pay taxes for waste collection and treatment. These taxes, that have risen significantly, are, not unnaturally, unpopular. And now we have a corruption case which suggests that a portion of the taxpayer's burden has gone directly into certain people's pockets. It brings it home - literally in this instance - the level of corruption and the extent to which it can affect any aspect of day-to-day living.

No one has been found guilty yet. But mud, or rubbish if you prefer, sticks. And as ever it is sticking to the UM. Here is a party that, following its expulsion, looked to try and re-invent itself and have done with the scandals that had attached themselves to it. However, it now has its spokesperson, in effect the number three in the party's current hierarchy, right in the firing-line.

It seemed inconceivable that the UM, discredited as it had been, could undergo a revival that might see it return to a position of power. Yet this has been happening. The doors had been opened once more to possible coalition government with Antich's socialists after this spring's elections. Had been. Perhaps it's time for them to be firmly shut.

And what of the electorate? Taxes, be they for rubbish or anything else, are an issue that plays with voters. They have a right to see that politicians don't play with their money, and if it is being played with, then those doing the playing need teaching a lesson. The elections are going to be difficult for the UM. And so they should be. They deserve nothing less. In fact, they deserve binning in the nearest container and waiting for the electoral rubbish collectors to come and dump them.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.