The judge rejects the PSOE's appeal to reopen the case of illegal donations to the PP

The former treasurer of the PP, Luis Barcenas, on his first release from Soto del Real prison in 2015. © Claudio AlvarezClaudio Alvarez

Judge Santiago Pedraz has rejected the appeal of the popular accusation of the PSOE that asked to reopen the cause of the illegal donations that the PP received between 1990 and 2009, almost eight million euros from dozens of businessmen, the vast majority of them government contractors public that such payments were prohibited by law.

The PP benefited from these anonymous donations that it never declared to the Court of Accounts or the Tax Agency, according to the judicial investigation.

Judge Pedraz, supported by the conclusions of the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor, maintains 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 before 2015 there was no crime of illegal financing of political parties and because during the investigation it has not been possible to prove the link between the illegal donations received —which he himself pointed out as his handwriting for nearly 20 years in notebooks—and the contracts awarded to those companies.

The Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office also rejects the PSOE's appeal, understanding that the different expert reports commissioned have not been able to prove a relationship between contracts awarded to companies and the donations received by the PP.

Regarding the recording of the meeting between a businessman and the then manager of Canal de Isabel II in which the contractor clearly stated that he donated money to the PP in exchange for obtaining contracts from administrations governed by the PP, the Prosecutor's Office points out: "In In our letter of December 9, 2022, we had to stop, due to its importance and criminal significance, since Rafael Palencia Marroquín mentioned the payment of a percentage for the award of works.

In this fact, of undoubted criminal relevance, the investigation has not revealed the intervention of third parties,

The businessman Alfonso García Pozuelo, owner of the Constructora Hispánica company that appears in the Bárcenas papers as a donor of hundreds of thousands of euros deposited in box b, reminded the judge that what Álvaro Lapuerta, former treasurer of the PP, now deceased, had stated, It is that the donors of the conservative formation be kindly attended to, but in no case that contracts were rigged in exchange for that money that was delivered to the party.

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