Doesn't time fly when you're having fun? I suppose it depends on how you define fun. Some of mine has involved corruption. Not that fun is really the word, I guess. Interest perhaps? Curiosity? Fascination?
Time has flown by since November 2006. I was reminded of this during a brief social media exchange the other day. It was the month when it all started. You can put an exact date on it: 27 November 2006. Or was the date two years earlier? In 2004 something very important occurred. The first regional anti-corruption prosecutor in the Balearics was appointed. The one-time attorney-general, Cándido Conde-Pumpido, had set about creating positions of these prosecutors in Spain's regions. There were some regions that needed prosecutors more than others. It may be that 2004 was when the domino effect started. Or at least when the dominoes stood up. Knock one and eventually they all tumble. One by one.
The prosecutor was Juan Carrau. In November 2006 it was he who knocked over the first domino. The name was Eugenio Hidalgo. He was the mayor of Andratx. He's still serving time.
Whenever one considers developments over the past ten years or so, one always goes back to Andratx. But there was something else which happened not long afterwards which drew comparatively little notice but was also significant: there were coordinated raids on lawyers and notaries offices. These, together with Andratx, marked the beginning. A change was in process. The dominoes started to quake and shiver.
Andratx wasn't the first time that the legal system had taken action against corruption. The Soller Tunnel affair of the 1990s brought down the Partido Popular president, Gabriel Cañellas, but the whole thing ended up with acquittals because of the statute of limitations. Andratx was to prove that the judiciary possessed sharper teeth, and when Jaume Matas came under suspicion, soon after losing the election in the spring of 2007, the dominoes were trembling even more.
Not everything that has transpired since Andratx can be traced back to it. But some can be. There was a trail to Matas, and once the prosecution and the investigating judge, José Castro, had sniffed it, they were dogs unprepared to let go of the bone. Palma Arena loomed massively, and by way of various branches from that investigation, the former Duke of Palma (Iñaki Urdangarin) caught the attention of Castro and Pedro Horrach.
The investigation into Palma police corruption was a separate matter, but overlaps were to emerge. José Maria Rodríguez, the now former head of the PP in Palma, was implicated with Andratx. Another strand of the Matas investigations - one still outstanding - was Son Espases. Among various names to have cropped up in respect of the hospital contract investigation is Tolo Cursach.
A great deal has been said and written since Cursach was arrested. There is a great deal to say. One only has to consider the charges. The book is being thrown at him, closely followed by the bookcase. In a spate of soul-searching, questions are being asked. Is Cursach somehow the culmination of all that has preceded him in terms of investigations? How could Cursach have happened? What does Cursach say about Mallorca?
It is miles away from dodgy land deals in Andratx, but there is a sense that it is a culmination, and that is because of the scale. The allegations are of systematic and systemic corruption that goes back decades, which has touched and affected many: systematic because of the organisation, systemic because of entire systems implicated. Cursach starts to become easy to explain when this distinction is drawn.
Alejandro Salas of Transparency International once said that corruption in Spain is "impregnated into different sectors of society". Gabriel Garcias, a law professor at the University of the Balearic Islands, has said that "so long as there is no ethical or moral transformation in society, the law will solve nothing".
This isn't to say that every person in Mallorca is culpable or anything of the sort. The point about society is the existence of a societal mores. Politicians, police, businesspeople are society. In order for corruption to exist and to be perpetuated on a wide scale and for a length of time, there has to be a societal collusion. If there isn't, then the system is incomplete.
In corruption cases such as Palma Arena or Nóos, the effects on society in general have been largely abstract. There hasn't been actual harm in a physical way. Nóos, for instance, didn't involve allegations of homicide or threats. Nóos was not systemic. That these allegations are present in the Cursach and police corruption investigations reveal the magnitude of what is being played out.
The judge and prosecutor are holding society to account. That society which enables abuse of a systemic nature. The final dominoes may just be falling.
Showing posts with label Tolo Cursach. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tolo Cursach. Show all posts
Thursday, March 16, 2017
Friday, March 03, 2017
Saluting The Brave: The Cursach Affair
Over two weeks ago there was an article in El Mundo the headline for which was "Rodríguez, the brave". This was not a certain Partido Popular Rodríguez (José María), who is implicated in the Palma police corruption investigations, but a PSOE Rodríguez - Alfonso, the mayor of Calvia.
To get to the essence of that article, the reason for praising Rodríguez for his bravery was because he had shown his willingness to remove a town hall official who was obstructing an investigation by a lower-ranking official. Moreover, Rodríguez was making it clear that Calvia will be ensuring that this investigation proceeds. It is to do with alleged "irregularities", ones that supposedly have existed for years and which Rodríguez's predecessors have preferred to overlook. It was no coincidence, therefore, that on Tuesday the National Police should raid not just Megapark and other establishments but also Calvia town hall. Rodríguez wouldn't have been told of the raid, but had he been, he would have been at the doors waving the police in.
Reaction to the arrest of Tolo Cursach was entirely predictable. I shall not repeat any of it. Whatever my view or the views of others, innocence must nevertheless be presumed. Let's just say that there was a fair amount of schadenfreude being expressed.
That same article concluded that Rodríguez has the means at his disposal to see through what he has said he will do. Despite experience that suggests otherwise (politicians who have lacked bravery), things in Mallorca could now change because of honest politicians. Rodríguez would be one.
There are other honest and brave men and women. Numbered among them are Judge Manuel Penalva, anti-corruption prosecutor Miguel Ángel Subirán, and Palma's councillor for public safety, Angelica Pastor, who has been subjected to threats and been the subject of some derision, which now appears to have been carefully orchestrated. Other honest and brave people are not publicly known, but they include witnesses and local police whistleblowers, the latter who must have endured periods of Kafka-esque purgatory, not knowing who to trust. There will be others who have felt likewise, including politicians and members of the state police forces.
From the legal ranks, we are more familiar with Judge Castro and prosecutor Pedro Horrach because of their pursuit of Matas and Urdangarin. Regardless of what one might think about the outcome of the Nóos trial, the integrity of Castro and Horrach should not be questioned. They disagreed where Princess Cristina was concerned. Legal opinion is entitled to differ. But the circumstances of their investigations were far from being the same to the ones confronting Penalva and Subirán. Neither Castro nor Horrach had any need to request the carrying of a gun. Penalva and Subirán have felt the need.
What was it Pedro Horrach said about intimidation, about being followed and about insults directed at his family? His investigations, however, were not in the same league as those of Penalva and Subirán. What started out as a relatively innocuous investigation into allegations of the fixing of police exam results in Palma has acquired a life of extraordinary significance. Matas, Urdangarin, Munar and their ilk are as nothing compared to what has being unfolding and will continue to unfold. Thieving public funds seems almost amateurish when put up against a web that embraces politicians, businesspeople and police and against what that web was allegedly conspiring to do. It was a web in which trust was impossible to ascertain except for the trust between perpetrators. Until, that is, Penalva and Subirán allowed trust to breathe.
What are we witnessing? The destruction once and for all of self-interested webs of deceit, threats and criminality? That's doubtful. But we are witnessing significant steps being taken in a positive direction. Judges and others are no longer cowed and deterred from investigating and for doing so with determination.
Horrach also spoke about pressures being intensified in small regions such as the Balearics. It was an understandable observation. Small regions, small populations create small pockets of power, mutually dependent and mutually corrupt or potentially corrupt. Small regions do not take kindly to those who snoop into affairs which have been crafted over decades. What does one make of the revelation that certain establishments have not been inspected for forty years? It's easy to make something of it. That's how things are.
Increasingly, though, they are not. There are not just the investigations into Palma police and connections to politicians and business. There are also those involving Calvia, about which little has been heard recently. But one senses that there will come a moment when a tidal wave will be unleashed, the culmination of the various investigations. When it is, Mallorca won't have witnessed anything like it.
We wait for it to happen, confident in the honest and the brave.
To get to the essence of that article, the reason for praising Rodríguez for his bravery was because he had shown his willingness to remove a town hall official who was obstructing an investigation by a lower-ranking official. Moreover, Rodríguez was making it clear that Calvia will be ensuring that this investigation proceeds. It is to do with alleged "irregularities", ones that supposedly have existed for years and which Rodríguez's predecessors have preferred to overlook. It was no coincidence, therefore, that on Tuesday the National Police should raid not just Megapark and other establishments but also Calvia town hall. Rodríguez wouldn't have been told of the raid, but had he been, he would have been at the doors waving the police in.
Reaction to the arrest of Tolo Cursach was entirely predictable. I shall not repeat any of it. Whatever my view or the views of others, innocence must nevertheless be presumed. Let's just say that there was a fair amount of schadenfreude being expressed.
That same article concluded that Rodríguez has the means at his disposal to see through what he has said he will do. Despite experience that suggests otherwise (politicians who have lacked bravery), things in Mallorca could now change because of honest politicians. Rodríguez would be one.
There are other honest and brave men and women. Numbered among them are Judge Manuel Penalva, anti-corruption prosecutor Miguel Ángel Subirán, and Palma's councillor for public safety, Angelica Pastor, who has been subjected to threats and been the subject of some derision, which now appears to have been carefully orchestrated. Other honest and brave people are not publicly known, but they include witnesses and local police whistleblowers, the latter who must have endured periods of Kafka-esque purgatory, not knowing who to trust. There will be others who have felt likewise, including politicians and members of the state police forces.
From the legal ranks, we are more familiar with Judge Castro and prosecutor Pedro Horrach because of their pursuit of Matas and Urdangarin. Regardless of what one might think about the outcome of the Nóos trial, the integrity of Castro and Horrach should not be questioned. They disagreed where Princess Cristina was concerned. Legal opinion is entitled to differ. But the circumstances of their investigations were far from being the same to the ones confronting Penalva and Subirán. Neither Castro nor Horrach had any need to request the carrying of a gun. Penalva and Subirán have felt the need.
What was it Pedro Horrach said about intimidation, about being followed and about insults directed at his family? His investigations, however, were not in the same league as those of Penalva and Subirán. What started out as a relatively innocuous investigation into allegations of the fixing of police exam results in Palma has acquired a life of extraordinary significance. Matas, Urdangarin, Munar and their ilk are as nothing compared to what has being unfolding and will continue to unfold. Thieving public funds seems almost amateurish when put up against a web that embraces politicians, businesspeople and police and against what that web was allegedly conspiring to do. It was a web in which trust was impossible to ascertain except for the trust between perpetrators. Until, that is, Penalva and Subirán allowed trust to breathe.
What are we witnessing? The destruction once and for all of self-interested webs of deceit, threats and criminality? That's doubtful. But we are witnessing significant steps being taken in a positive direction. Judges and others are no longer cowed and deterred from investigating and for doing so with determination.
Horrach also spoke about pressures being intensified in small regions such as the Balearics. It was an understandable observation. Small regions, small populations create small pockets of power, mutually dependent and mutually corrupt or potentially corrupt. Small regions do not take kindly to those who snoop into affairs which have been crafted over decades. What does one make of the revelation that certain establishments have not been inspected for forty years? It's easy to make something of it. That's how things are.
Increasingly, though, they are not. There are not just the investigations into Palma police and connections to politicians and business. There are also those involving Calvia, about which little has been heard recently. But one senses that there will come a moment when a tidal wave will be unleashed, the culmination of the various investigations. When it is, Mallorca won't have witnessed anything like it.
We wait for it to happen, confident in the honest and the brave.
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