Former PP Treasurer Luis Barcenas on his first release from Soto del Real prison in 2015. © Claudio AlvarezClaudio Alvarez
Judge Santiago Pedraz has dismissed the complaint of the PSOE’s popular prosecution, which had asked to investigate the cause of illegal donations submitted by the PP between 1990 and 2009, almost eight million euros, from dozens of businessmen, the vast majority of them public contractors of the Government to reopen that such payments are prohibited by law. According to the judicial inquiry, the PP benefited from these anonymous donations, which it never reported to the Court of Auditors or the Tax Authority.
Judge Pedraz, based on the anti-corruption prosecutor’s conclusions, claims that it has not been possible to prove that these illegal donations were made in exchange for public contracts.
Former PP Treasurer Luis Bárcenas supports filing the case because there was no crime of illegal party financing before 2015 and because during the investigation it was not possible to prove the link between the illegal donations received – what he himself said was his signature since almost 20 years in notebooks – and the orders placed with these companies.
The Public Prosecutor’s Office for Combating Corruption also rejects the PSOE’s appeal, since the various reports commissioned could not prove any connection between the contracts awarded to companies and the donations received by the PP. Referring to the recording of the meeting between a businessman and the then manager of the Canal de Isabel II, in which the contractor clearly stated that he had donated money to the PP in order to obtain orders from administrations subordinate to the PP, the prosecutor points out : “ In our letter of December 9, 2022, we had to stop because of its importance and criminal importance, since Rafael Palencia Marroquín mentioned paying a percentage for the award of works. In this fact, which is undoubtedly criminally relevant, the investigation has not revealed the intervention of third parties, with the exception of Rafael Palencia Marroquín, whose criminal liability has expired under the provisions of Articles 130. 1. 1º) of the Penal Code and 637. 3º of the Code of Criminal Procedure , by order of October 27, 2021, upon death on October 14, 2021”.
Businessman Alfonso García Pozuelo, owner of the company Constructora Hispánica, which appears in the Bárcenas papers as a donor of hundreds of thousands of euros in box b, reminded the judge what Álvaro Lapuerta, former Treasurer of the PP, now deceased, had said: It is such that the donors of the Conservative formation are treated kindly, but in no case have contracts been rigged in exchange for the money supplied to the party.
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