PP’s former treasurer breaks silence on Spanish slush fund scandal
By The Financial Times
The former treasurer of Spain’s ruling Popular
party (PP) has broken his silence over a slush fund scandal that has rocked the
country for the past six months, claiming in an interview that the
party had broken campaign finance laws for at least 20 years.
Luis Bárcenas,
the man at the heart of the scandal, was arrested and detained late last month
in connection with an inquiry into the €48m fortune he is said to have amassed
in Swiss bank accounts. The investigating judge ruled that the former party
treasurer will have to remain in prison until his trial, and fixed his bail at
€28m.
His decision to give an interview after months of
blanket denials, and to threaten further revelations, marks a potentially
dramatic turn in the high-profile scandal. It suggests that Mr Bárcenas is
disappointed with the lack of support he has received from PP leaders since the
affair broke, and that he may be ready to implicate other senior party leaders.
According to the front page report in the
Sunday edition of El Mundo newspaper, Mr Bárcenas claims to have documents and
hard discs that chronicle the systematic violation of party finance laws. Their
publication, he adds, would “bring down the government”.
The interview – which appeared carefully worded and
contained only a handful of direct quotes from the former treasurer – was
conducted by the editor of El Mundo several days before Mr Bárcenas went to
jail.
Though he confirmed many of the allegations that
have been swirling in the Spanish media in recent months, Mr Bárcenas made
clear that he was not yet willing to release all the damaging information he
possessed.
“In the current circumstances, the last thing that
Spain needs is this government to fall,” he was quoted as saying.
However, the interview is likely to deal a heavy
blow to the centre-right PP all the same, and not just because it contains the
threat of further revelations.
Mr Bárcenas described in detail how donors used to
arrive at party headquarters with bags and suitcases full of cash, some of
which would be channelled into the official party bank account, while some
would be used to cover election expenses outside the official campaign fund.
Another portion of the money would go into a safe, and contribute to a party
slush fund.
That money, in turn, was used to make quarterly
cash payments to the party president, the secretary-general and deputy
secretary-generals, he was quoted as saying. Mr Bárcenas’s account broadly
confirms the revelations earlier this year in El País newspaper, which
published copies of the slush fund account drawn up by the former treasurer,
including details of payments to party leaders.
The leaked Bárcenas papers are said to show that
Mariano Rajoy, the Spanish prime minister, received 35 cash payments from the
slush fund between 1997 and 2008, worth a total of €322,231. Mr Rajoy has
strongly denied the claims and published his
tax returns in an attempt to prove his innocence.
There was no comment from Mr Rajoy and other party
leader on Sunday.
The scandal has already inflicted severe damage on
the popular standing of senior party figures and on the PP itself.
According to opinion poll results released by El
País on Sunday, the ruling party would win only 23 per cent of the vote if
elections were held today. The survey also found that 82 per cent of
respondents believed that the PP itself was responsible for the scandal because
it “knew what was going on and tolerated it”. Asked whether they trusted Mr
Rajoy, 86 per cent of respondents said no.