Bites and rigged contracts: two months of trial corner the PP again by Gürtel

Esperanza Aguirre, then the PP candidate for the presidency of the Community of Madrid, at an electoral act in 2003 in Boadilla, during one of the campaigns financed by Gürtel, according to the Police. José Huesca (EFE)

The National Court has activated the countdown again.

After two months of sessions, the court declared this Tuesday seen for sentencing the third great trial of the PP for the

, which again corners the conservative formation, already condemned twice for benefiting from the corrupt plot of Francisco Correa.

The evidence displayed during the oral hearing —including the confession of 17 defendants;

the statement of the repentant former councilor who denounced the case;

the reports of the Police, the Treasury and the Prosecutor's Office...- not only draw a network of influences around the popular ones to rig public contracts and distribute millionaire bribes, but also complicate the future of Pablo Casado's party, persecuted by a past of corruption.

The word now belongs to the magistrates, who must issue a resolution in the coming months.

The 17 confessed.

The public ministry has managed to tie during the oral hearing the three legs on which this case was raised, focused on the businesses of the Gürtel network in Boadilla del Monte (Madrid). Among the 17 defendants who have confessed in the trial are the brains of the plot (Francisco Correa and his

, Pablo Crespo, former Secretary of Organization of the Galician PP); the politicians who prepared the landing of the plot in the Boadilla City Council and in the Municipal Land and Housing Company (with former popular mayor Arturo González Panero, alias

, at the head); and the businessmen who paid illegal commissions in exchange for being awarded contracts.

Francisco Correa, leader of Gürtel, faces a request from the Prosecutor's Office for 19 years in prison after it reduced his initial request, which amounted to 76 years. ULY MARTÍN (EL PAÍS)

Their stories offered profuse details about the mechanisms used to enrich themselves and divert money - part of which was used to pay for party electoral acts, as they recognized.

“My father, if he was interested in any work, would talk to Correa so that he could make the appropriate arrangements for the award.

In 2007, my father gave me a briefcase with money that I did not count and I gave it to a man from Correa's company, I think it was Crespo," said José Luis Martínez Parra, former vice president of the Teconsa construction company.

Businessman José Luis Ulibarri spoke along the same lines: “[Correa] told me that he had the capacity to influence an award of land.

I imagined that he was the mayor”.

The also builder Alfonso García-Pozuelo specified that they used to pay a bribe of “approximately 3%”.

A key witness.

José Luis Peñas, the popular former councilor of Majadahonda (Madrid) who uncovered Gürtel and who secretly recorded the protagonists of the plot for years, says that he never felt like a traitor.

“Correa was a very good friend of mine.

But I didn't feel that I was betraying him, although I didn't feel good because I didn't have to do that, but the State security forces [...] I told him to leave Spain and, well, I wish he had gone on time”, he explains in conversation with EL PAÍS.

The testimony of this former mayor, whom the daughter of the brain of the corrupt network called "Uncle Pepe", burst into force at the oral hearing: "From Genoa guidelines were given: who had to be hired, where a candidate went... The headquarters is the one that handles all the campaigns, it says how everything should be done”.

For Pablo Crespo, 'number two' of Gürtel, the Public Ministry also lowers (from 64 years in prison to 16 years) the sentence request for having recognized "everything".

Police reports.

The Economic and Fiscal Crime Unit (UDEF) of the Police inflicted significant damage on the defense of the PP.

Chief Inspector Manuel Morocho, main investigator of

, reviewed for hours the invoices and other documents that prove, according to what he said, that Correa acted as "the executor and channeler of funds, whatever their origin, that the party made available to him to be able to finance acts." The police command described how the businessmen negotiated with the head of the network so that, through "his contacts in the Public Administrations, he could get them those contracts that they considered to be of interest". These paid bribes that were later shared by those involved, who diverted a part to pay for popular campaign events.

Morocho's description was so incisive that the Prosecutor's Office, which asks to condemn the PP to pay 204,000 euros, picked up the glove and summarized that Gürtel "colonized" the institutions governed by the party.

“Correa established a relationship with all the leaders of the PP and with the mayors.

He was a person with a great capacity to influence all of them, ”said Pablo Crespo.

A thesis that was reinforced by the former mayor González Panero, who faces 40 years in prison and is the only one of the 17 confessed to whom the public ministry has not lowered the sentence request: “I verified that Correa had a lot of ascendancy in the PP.

He entered without the need for accreditation, ”said the former councilor at the trial.

González Panero, former mayor of Boadilla, faces a request for 40 years in prison.

The prosecutor has not reduced it considering that he did not confess until he was cornered. Javier Lizón (EFE)

Treasury Conclusions.

The Treasury experts detailed the operation to channel black payments, falsify invoices and hide the money, for which the corrupt network created a complex network of companies and bank accounts abroad.

As they added, with the bites campaign events of Esperanza Aguirre, former president of the Community of Madrid, were financed.

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