Justice On Trial: Caso Gürtel

There's a major trial taking place. One into corruption. Remarkably enough, it isn't taking place in Mallorca. Even more remarkably, there aren't any Mallorcan politicians in the dock. This isn't to say, however, that there are not Mallorcan implications. One of them may involve former president Jaume Matas (when doesn't it?)

This is the first major trial to do with caso Gürtel, a corruption investigation that has taken so long and is so complicated that it defies any simple explanation. Even the name of the case isn't straightforward. Gürtel is German. It means belt. The choice of name disguised the individual at the heart of the network that spawned the case: Francisco Correa - Frank Belt, if you like.

To say that Gürtel is just about kickbacks would be way too simplistic. This was a web that was woven around the business affairs of Francisco Correa, who had long cultivated links with - who else - the Partido Popular. Gürtel covers illegal funding of the PP and the favourable awarding of contracts (different public authorities are implicated, including both the regional community of Madrid and the Madrid town hall). Money laundering, tax havens and tax evasion, bribery - they're all there.

If this sounds familiar - one can think of the Nóos trial, for instance - it is, but while Nóos and the alleged activities of the husband of Princess Cristina and his associate embraced some six million euros, that was chicken feed compared with Gürtel. The exact amounts have never accurately been established. The total has been put at as much as 120,000,000 euros.

Gürtel isn't simply (what am I saying - simply?) about massive corruption. It is a trial that has also placed the Spanish judicial system in the dock because of that system's potential for manipulation by political forces. In order to understand this, one has to go back to the origins of the investigations and who launched them. The investigating judge in 2009 - yes, that's when the legal ball started to roll - was Baltasar Garzón. He was to be suspended the following year. Not because of Gürtel but because it was argued that he had exceeded his powers in investigating war crimes committed by the Franco regime.

Garzón had his enemies in the legal profession, but he also had them in the Partido Popular. The Franco angle did somewhat obscure the motives for having him suspended. He was readmitted, only to be suspended again because he had ordered recordings of suspects and lawyers involved in Gürtel. All the while, there was the unmistakable influence of the PP.

But getting Garzón removed didn't end the investigation. Even more life was to be breathed into it when the revelations came about the so-called B accounts that had been operated by former PP treasurer Luis Bárcenas (one of those now on trial). These too pointed to illegal party funding. Gürtel and Bárcenas are intimately linked.

If the PP had hoped that Gürtel would go away along with Gárzon, it was very much mistaken, and Gürtel, given its sheer scale, gave political momentum to others - Podemos most obviously. Pablo Iglesias's party and indeed the C's of Albert Rivera had corruption firmly in their sights. Yet despite this momentum and therefore the political situation that currently exists, what do we get? The trial has opened with legal challenges. They have come from defence lawyers, but giving these lawyers support is the PP. It almost beggars belief but the PP, via its lawyer, agrees that there is a list of reasons for having the whole trial process stopped in its tracks. And what might these reasons include? Baltasar Garzón. The investigating judge and those recordings.

The irregularities that surrounded Garzón were also said to have related to his having been designated as investigating judge. In other words, it is claimed that his was a political appointment (he has never disguised being sympathetic to PSOE).

So, it can be said that there were politics on both sides; that the judicial system was open to differing political influences. Where Garzón was concerned, there was probably also his own self-view. He was a celebrated judge by then, but this fame is another facet in suggesting that the judicial system is on trial. Investigating judges become famous. Mallorca has a couple of very well-known ones: José Castro, as much a people's hero as Garzón was to many, for his pursuit of Jaume Matas and Iñaki Urdangarin; Manuel Penalva, heading the investigation into Palma police corruption.

The system therefore creates celebrities out of judges, and much though they would always seek to remain impartial and within the rules, there can also be human fallibility. And political leanings are occasionally exposed. Take Juan Pedro Yllanes, now a Podemos deputy in Congress, who had originally been due to preside over Nóos.

Justice must be seen to be done. With Gürtel, whether it will or will be allowed to is another matter.

The Strength Of Luis Bárcenas

The Spanish media loves nothing more than a politician or some other member of the prominenti going into or coming out of prison. Because both of these happen so frequently, there might by now be getting-banged-up and not-getting-banged-up fatigue and forgetfulness. Is Jaume Matas still in prison or isn't he? In, out, in or maybe not, we've lost all trace of his whereabouts. But there is no fatigue when the newly liberated is ex-Partido Popular treasurer Luis Bárcenas. What a couple of days he had last week. It is reassuring to have learned that the Spanish prison system does not deny inmates the luxury of a well-tailored suit, a silk tie and a neat white handkerchief tucked into a breast pocket, but then Luis had his audience to impress: the Balearic parliamentary commission considering alleged irregularities and abuses of privileged information regarding the building of Son Espases hospital. There was some formidable video kit on hand to enable Luis to tell nervous commissioners (those from the PP) that the local PP HQ had been built with donations from businesspeople and that he had handed over some eight grand to Matas to help the former Balearics president set himself up in Madrid after losing the election in 2007; some eight grand which had come from the so-called B accounts.

Perhaps more than anything, it is the mystery which surrounds these B accounts that intrigues everyone the most. We are nowhere nearer knowing the truth about what PP leaders insist was some form of elaborate hoax by Bárcenas, but the fact that they imply payments to the likes of Mariano Rajoy is the huge sword hovering over PP heads, ready at any moment to deliver a killing blow, if, that is, the accounts were to be discovered to have been authentic.

Following his star role appearance by video link, Luis found that he was to be a free man, 200 grand having been stumped up for his release on bail. Hence, the media massed and Luis emerged, sporting some high-quality knitwear. "Luis has been really strong," he said with a touch of irony; Rajoy had once sent him a text message telling him to remain strong. The PP has nothing to fear, he also said, but added, perhaps ominously, "at the moment". While he believed that the PP was the right party to continue governing Spain, there are still several months before the election; plenty of time maybe for fear to arise. At the same time as he was preparing to leave the Soto del Real prison, Luis would have been hearing that the state attorney was requesting that he should go back to prison - for 60 years (and eight months); if he is found guilty of charges in respect of the long-dragged-out "caso Gürtel", the biggest corruption scandal of the lot.

Knowing this might be the case, what does Luis have to lose? Freed from prison, we can reach for metaphors of the small arms and artillery variety: Luis, the loose cannon, firing from the hip, going down with all guns blazing. Within no time, i.e. the day after his release, Luis was in fact making it abundantly clear that the PP did have something to fear. Mariano knew about the B accounts all along, he said. Rajoy, on balance, would probably prefer that he was still locked up.

The Killers Of The Partido Popular

Right, all you lot who can't speak Spanish, here's today's grammar lesson. The Spanish verb to kill is, everyone? Anyone? Yes, you, you at the back there, consulting Google Translate on your iPhone. "Matar?" Correct. Now, let's do a bit of conjugation shall we. Matar, third person. He kills, she kills, you (formal singular) kill. And the answer is? Juan Mata, the Manchester United footballer, kills. Él mata. Next, first person, I kill. Who shall we have here? Come on down, Ana, yes Ana Mato, until very recently the Spanish health minister. Yo mato. Now, it gets a bit tricky. Second person, you kill (informal singular). Who can this possibly be? My God, Jaume, Jaume Matas, ex-Balearics president, newly returned to jail. Tú matas.

Next question. Which of these three - Juan Mata, Ana Mato, Jaume Matas - is the odd one out? Simple. It is of course Juan Mata. Thanks to an extraordinary conjugational coincidence, he is not a Partido Popular politician who has been caught in a corruption net either alleged or proven. He should really donate his surname to Ana and Jaume, though. It would sound so much better and so much more accurate. Ana kills. Jaume kills. Or, if you fancy some alternative meanings for "matar", Ana does in, Jaume destroys. Pretence to the end with the PP. Destroying democracy. It isn't Podemos which is on the point of doing this, as Maria Dolores Cospedal (PP) has suggested; the PP has been perfectly capable of doing this by itself.

Greater care really should be taken when appointments are made. I mean, whose bright idea was it to have a health minister whose name comes from the verb to kill? Rajoy's probably. And how he must wish he'd given Ana the heave-ho a few weeks back when there was a clamour for her head over the ebola business. This might at least have reduced the embarrassment of the past week when she resigned having been cited by a judge as an alleged "participant to profit" from gifts that were lavished around through the network that has made the "caso Gürtel" the massive, ongoing corruption investigation that it is.

Poor old Rajoy, his timing was, as ever, impeccably dreadful. One day he had brought his anti-corruption measures before Congress and the next day Ana had handed in her resignation; echoes of the "few small incidents" (of corruption) speech he made in Murcia the day before much of Murcia was raided. Mariano, much to everyone's amusement, was forced to declare that Spain was not corrupt. And no, Spain, as in the whole country isn't. Just some of it, and Rajoy knows full well which part. By the way, can anyone remind me? Those Bárcenas ledgers of supposed black payments. The M.R. mentioned as an alleged recipient was? Why has all that gone so quiet?

A Few Small Incidents: PP and corruption

On Friday last week, the Spanish premier was assuring anyone in Brussels who might have been listening that he fully respected judicial decisions (Spanish ones) with regard to corruption allegations. Two days later, Mariano Rajoy was in Murcia, addressing a Partido Popular gathering. He reiterated his respect for the judiciary, adding that he had not liked "some things" that had occurred but downplaying the level of corruption. There had been a "few small incidents".

I don't subscribe to conspiracy theories but I am a great believer in the power of coincidence. "Qué casualidad", therefore, when on Monday Murcia found itself at the centre of a series of raids and arrests which threaten to outdo even the "caso Gürtel" in terms of scale and reach. Gürtel, thus named because the German for belt has been used instead of the Spanish "correa", floated to the surface in early 2009. It refers to a businessman, Francisco Correa, and his links to Partido Popular politicians. Its reach has embraced, in most direct terms, the Valencia region and the Madrid community, but its tentacles have spread wider - to the Balearics, for example - and its sheer complexity has found the PP further dragged into the net, because of possible links to the discredited former PP treasurer, Luis Bárcenas. It has been estimated that investigations related to Gürtel have shown that 120 million euros of public money have been somehow "lost". The investigations drag on and on, and they had been started by Baltasar Garzón, the high-profile judge who was an exposer of corruption and an attempted exposer of Franco's war crimes. With the help of a good deal of pressure from PP sources, Garzón was disqualified as a judge. His alleged breaching of the Amnesty Law and so therefore the moratorium on investigating offences committed during the Franco regime was the excuse for his disqualification, but it has been argued that Gürtel was the real reason. So much for the judiciary, eh?

Gürtel is one of Mariano's "few small incidents". Another is the whole Bárcenas affair and the supposed existence of separate accounts through which leading PP politicians and businesspeople received payments in black, one of those politicians - or so the ledger evidence implies - being Mariano. Little has been heard of Bárcenas over the past few months. The judiciary must be hard at work and receiving the full respect of the Spanish premier, his government and his party.

Another "small incident" arose not so long ago, even if its origins are at least fifteen years old. This is the Caja Madrid affair, one that I wrote about recently. It has to do with payments to businesspeople and to politicians (for the most part from the PP) via a so-called black card, a credit card that wasn't a credit card because the credit was never repaid. It was trousered, spent on lavish meals, hotel stays, shopping trips and the amounts spent were not declared. At the centre of this storm is Rodrigo Rato, former president of the bank and an old chum (now un-chummed) of ... Mariano Rajoy.

Presumably, Rajoy had got no wind of the storm that was to break the day after he had spoken in Murcia. Consequently, and if nothing else, he has been made to look pretty foolish. Heaven knows how much public money "Operación Púnica" might find to have been lost, but it could well outstrip Gürtel, and already the investigation net has spread very much further than Gürtel originally did. Madrid, León, Valencia and Murcia; that is a geographical reach which is astonishing in its sheer distance alone. Where else might the investigators look?

It is fair to say that there are non-PP people implicated in Púnica, but it is the PP which is at its epicentre, typified by Francisco Granados, a one-time number two in Madrid and the holder of two Swiss bank accounts. For Rajoy, Púnica is a calamity. That startled and fearful expression he betrays when speaking to camera will now be more startled and fearful. He has been electrocuted by investigators placing fingers into plugs of corruption with such high potential that it becomes almost impossible to see him leaving the burns unit in any fit state to stand again as premier or even to struggle on to the next election.

And in the background there will be someone who, were he used to short-texting with English abbreviations, will be "pmsl". For Pablo Iglesias of Podemos, Púnica is an own goal of such magnitude and embarrassment that the PP may as well now troop off the pitch with their heads hung in shame, hide in the political dressing-room and hope to God the electorate don't turn so nasty that they propel Iglesias into the directors' box. Podemos couldn't have asked for anything better. The PP is Podemos's most effective recruitment agency.