A MASSIVE corruption racket involving the right-wing PP party at national level has finally come to trial, and ex-treasurer Luis Bárcenas (pictured) sentenced to 33 years in jail.
The ringleader, Francisco Correa, has been imprisoned for 51 years, whilst Bárcenas' wife Rosalía Iglesias has been sentenced to 15 years.
In total, 29 people have been imprisoned for a combined term of 351 years, although those with the longest sentences will serve no more than 30 years, the maximum anyone can be sent to prison for in connection with the same crime.
The PP as a party has been fined €245,492 and former health minister Ana Mato has been ordered to pay €27,857 for knowingly accepting gifts from the bribery and back-hander racket.
This complex trial, known as the Gürtel case and ongoing for over five years, involved businesses giving the PP cash bribes in exchange for lucrative public works contracts – the cash being split between top-flight politicians in envelopes and used to fund electoral campaigns.
Bárcenas himself was sitting on a slush fund in Swiss bank accounts to the tune of €48.2 million.
At first, the PP denied it had any 'underground' accounting system, referred to by the media as 'Cashbox B', and when the court ordered Bárcenas' old office computers to be seized from the PP headquarters, the judge found the hard drives had been wiped.
But the details of the case show that a 'Cashbox B' had been in existence since 1989, managed by four of the PP's five treasurers to date.
Rosalía Iglesias is accused of having fiddled her own taxes, hiding chunks of her income through the corrupt network and passing off sums of money held in Swiss bank accounts as proceeds of sale of artwork.
This is the first time in Spain's history that a political party has been sentenced for a criminal offence, and the National Court considers that the PP 'accumulated illegal wealth at the expense of the interests of the State', both while it was in power in national government and as its opposition.
Ana Mato resigned from her post as health minister once her involvement in the Gürtel racket came to light, even though she protested her innocence, but her ex-husband Jesús Sepúlveda, former mayor of Pozuelo de Alarcón, has been jailed for 14 years.
Former regional minister in Madrid, Alberto López Viejo, has been sentenced to 31 years and ex-mayor of Majadahonda (Madrid), Guillermo Ortega, to 38 years.
Ex-councillor of Majadahonda, also from the PP, José Luis Peñas – the whistleblower who brought the Gürtel case to light – has been jailed for four years and nine months for his own involvement.
The PP has tried to claim its back-handers were 'donations' and that it did not earn a profit from the Gürtel racket.
