The PP faces two years of corruption trials

The president of the PP, Pablo Casado, announced two days after the biggest electoral disaster of his party in Catalonia that the national leadership was not going to give explanations again “about any past question that corresponds to a personal action that has not been for the benefit of the party or may have even harmed him ”.

“We cannot afford it,” he clarified, “especially with the upcoming judicial calendar.

Mortgages in politics are not hereditary, they have not been for any other party and they should not be for ours ”.

His commitment to silence on the corruption of the PP will meet in the next two years with a dozen trials that will put under suspicion a political party that has ruled 15 years in Spain and that has won in five general elections of the recent democratic stage.

These are the main judicial processes for corruption that the PP faces and about which the national leadership presided over by Pablo Casado does not intend to speak again.

1.- Box b, the PP supposed subsidiary civil liable.

The National Court judges from February 8 until the end of May whether the PP used a box b fed by illegal donations from businessmen to pay for part of the reform works at its headquarters.

It is the same headquarters in Genoa, 13, which Casado has now decided to abandon to escape the corrupt past that haunts his party.

The State Advocacy requests 1.2 million euros from the PP as a subsidiary civil liable for the crimes allegedly committed by the person who was its treasurer, Luis Bárcenas.

2.- Gürtel case: second stage.

The PP, supposed profitable participant.

In the autumn the trial will begin for what is called the second stage of the Gürtel case and that resolves the alleged corruption of the Francisco Correa business group with some administrations governed by the PP between 2005 and 2009. The PP was sentenced as a lucrative participant to pay 245,000 euros in the sentence of the first stage of Gürtel confirmed by the Supreme Court.

In the second stage trial, the indictment states that the Popular Party "would have benefited from the group's actions in an amount of 204,198 euros by receiving amounts and payment of services from the illicit commissions obtained by the Correa group".

3.- Taula case.

The PP, allegedly responsible for the illegal financing of electoral campaigns.

The judge who is instructing the Taula case will sit on the bench in the coming months to the Popular Party as subsidiary civil responsible in the alleged diversion of public funds through the firm Thematica Events to finance electoral campaigns of popular candidates.

The investigator of this case directs the accusation in this case against the former manager of the public company Imelsa, Marcos Benavent;

who has confessed to the crimes and has collaborated with the investigation;

the former vice president of the Valencia Provincial Council and former mayor of Moncada with the PP, Juan José Medina and various businessmen and officials.

The prosecution reports in its indictment that money came out of the public company Imelsa to finance electoral campaigns of the PP.

The system consisted of raising the costs of services that Imelsa contracted with certain companies, and these companies did electoral work for PP candidates without charging anything in return.

4.- Arganda del Rey: alleged illegal commissions to charges of the PP for a real estate pitch.

The investigation is concluded and pending to hold the trial where an alleged real estate ball will be investigated in favor of Martinsa, a company that allegedly paid large amounts of money in illegal commissions to PP charges in exchange for taking over land to build thousands of homes.

5.- Punic case.

Alleged illegal financing of the PP of Madrid.

The Punic case is a process opened seven years ago with numerous separate pieces where, among other things, the illegal financing of the Madrid PP during the presidency of Esperanza Aguirre is investigated.

The investigating judge has to conclude his work this summer and issue the order to open the oral trial.

Three former regional presidents of the PP, Esperanza Aguirre, Ignacio González and Cristina Cifuentes, are accused in the case.

The former treasurer of the PP, Luis Bárcenas, has offered to collaborate with justice in this case and provide documentation that would demonstrate the illegal methods of financing the party during the presidency of Esperanza Aguirre.

The trial will be held in 2022.

6.- Lezo case.

Contracts rigged and bitten in favor of high officials of the PP.

The National Court investigates different operations of the Government of the Community of Madrid (purchase of a water distribution company in Brazil in exchange for a bite of six million dollars; construction works of a golf course in the center of the city to favor of a friendly company, payment of illegal commissions for the award of a railway route).

Former President Ignacio González is the main defendant in a case whose investigation will end this summer to open the oral trial.

7.- City of Justice case.

The anti-corruption chief that Casado put on trial for corruption.

Judge José de la Mata last November issued an indictment against Alfredo Prada, former counselor of Justice of the Community of Madrid during the Government of Esperanza Aguirre and a henchman of Pablo Casado, who put him in charge of the Office of the Pupular Office in charge of investigating anomalies and irregularities in the performance of public officials of the PP.

Judge De la Mata found during the investigation sufficient evidence of prevarication, fraud to the administrations and embezzlement of public funds in the management of the City of Justice by Alfredo Prada, who long ago left any position of responsibility in the PP of Pablo Casado.

8.- Valencia contracts case: former president Camps, prosecuted.

Judge José de la Mata issued an indictment against numerous leaders of the Valencian Government of the PP for the award of contracts in favor of the corrupt plot led by Francisco Correa.

The Prosecutor's Office asks for two years in jail for Francisco Camps, the former Valencian president who has so far emerged unscathed from all the corruption cases that affected his Executive and for which more than a dozen high-ranking positions that he named have been convicted.

The Prosecutor's Office accuses Camps of favoring the Gürtel plot to obtain at least 13 rigged contracts for hundreds of thousands of euros.

9.- Kitchen case.

Obstruction of justice in the investigation of box b of the PP.

The police leadership of the Ministry of the Interior launched an illegal operation paid for with funds reserved to spy on the former PP treasurer, Luis Bárcenas, and his family, according to the investigation.

The objective of the espionage was to steal compromising documentation for the Government of Mariano Rajoy, according to the evidence collected by the instructor.

The judge charged the former Minister of the Interior, Jorge Fernández Díaz, and the former Secretary of State, Francisco Martínez, given the existing evidence that it was these two political positions who devised and ordered an operation that was hidden at all times from the judge investigating the case .

The investigation of this case, with half a dozen accused commissioners, will end in the coming months.

The trial will not take place before 2022. The Congress of Deputies has created a commission of inquiry to analyze these events.

10.- Villarejo Case.

The imprisoned commissioner who helped the PP.

The macrosummary that attends to the name of Tándem and that keeps the commissioner José Manuel Villarejo imprisoned for more than three years is loaded with multiple evidence against the PP.

Not only in the Kitchen case but in some recordings and various documentation of Villarejo, there appear public positions of the PP that the commissioner supposedly helped.

From the conversation he recorded in July 2009 in the office of the then secretary general of the PP, Dolores de Cospedal, to define strategies that would avoid further damage in the investigation of the Gürtel case to his meetings with the Secretary of State for Security, Francisco Martínez .

Some of the separate pieces of the Villarejo case dot the PP as the party for which the commissioner tried to block investigations of the courts on the corruption of the conservative formation.