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Now A Vast Political Espionage Scandal To Top Off The Sordid Corruption Scandal In Spain
Wolf Richter www.testosteronepit.com www.amazon.com/author/wolfrichter
Spain just can’t catch a break—a horrid economy with dizzying unemployment, collapsing banks, a prime minister and ruling party tarred by corruption.... Now a political espionage scandal blew up, scattering debris and money laundering allegations far and wide.
Unemployment in Spain was 26% in December, youth unemployment 55%. GDP last quarter dropped for the fifth month in a row (-0.7%), the steepest decline since the financial crisis. Consumer spending plunged 10% in December from prior year—following a hike in the value-added tax. And the budget deficit target of 6.3% (not counting the billions plowed into bailing out the banks) is skidding out of reach.
This leitmotif is accompanied by an elegantly escalating corruption scandal that broke in early February. A classic cash-for-contracts arrangement, where senior politicians received secret payments from business folks who in return were awarded juicy government contracts.
It was documented in handwritten ledgers, involved a €22 million slush fund in Switzerland, and was allegedly run by Luis Bárcenas, the ex-treasurer of the conservative People’s Party (PP), the party of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, whose name appears repeatedly and very inconveniently on the ledgers as recipient [which put him and Chancellor Merkel on the corruption hot seat in Berlin.... The Confidence Crisis In Spain Sends Out Shock Waves].
Add a political espionage scandal. The case blew up in a peculiar manner. According to sources—everything in this case is “according to sources”—Método 3, a detective agency, went out of business not long ago. One of its laid-off employees was an ex-cop, in charge of the data department. When Método 3 couldn’t pay him what it owed him, he appropriated the computers, video and audio recordings, and a bunch of sensitive files. And they’ve shown up at the technical division of the police in Barcelona.
Now “sources” are talking about what’s in this treasure-trove. Apparently Método 3 had been commissioned by a long list of clients to spy on Catalan party leaders, politicians of national parties, judges, prosecutors, executives, and other prominent figures, sources told La Vanguardia. One of the recordings was of a lunch meeting at a restaurant in Barcelona in July 2010 between Alicia Sánchez-Camacho, President of the PP in Catalonia, and a woman named María Victoria Álvarez.
Álvarez was desperate and scared. She told Sánchez-Camacho that she’d gone on a road trip to Andorra with her then boyfriend, Pujol Ferrusola. The trunk was loaded with packets of 500-euro notes, which he deposited in a bank account there.
She outlined how Pujol Ferrusola—son of powerbroker Jordi Pujol, leader of the Democratic Convergence of Catalonia (CDC) from 1974 to 2003 and President of Catalonia from 1980 to 2003—was doing his family’s money laundering. She wanted to report him but feared for her life. So she asked Sánchez-Camacho for help.
The Pujol-Ferrusola family has been fingered in a police report that seeped to the surface in 2012. While Jordi Pujol was in power, companies associated with his sons were awarded lucrative contracts allegedly through false bidding. These cases had been investigated at the time, but nothing happened.... Until the recording of a conversation about a trunk full of euros popped up.
On Thursday, Álvarez finally testified before the High Court about what she’d witnessed.
Also on Thursday, Sánchez-Camacho pressed charges with the police and filed a complaint in court against Método 3. She’d found out by reading the papers that her lunch conversation had been recorded—and that the top official of the Catalan Socialist Party (PSC), José Zaragoza, at the time party secretary, had allegedly commissioned Método 3 to do the dirty work.
Interior Minister Jorge Fernández announced an “exhaustive” investigation. “We have a lot of information,” he said ominously. Zaragoza and others accused of anything whatsoever have denied everything.
Sources have told La Vanguardia that the materials are so massive that the police have formed a special team, supported by police units from Madrid, to investigate them. The lunch episode uncovered a web of “unpredictable scope.” The investigation is still in an early stage, sources said, but the client list of Método 3 is long and “delicate,” and includes officials of various political parties and institutions, and the number of people tangled up in it is vast. “This is about top politicians,” said the sources.
These revelations are driving the political elite ever deeper into a malodorous morass just when that same elite is forcefully tightening the belts of the people. Workers have taken pay cuts, social benefits have been trimmed, families have lost their homes, the VAT, which hits everyone, has been jacked up, all to squeeze the maximum from those who still have any juice left. Yet, Spain’s legal system wasn’t designed to root out corruption; and Rajoy, among others, may be thinking that this too shall pass.
Corruption of spectacular proportions is dogging another Eurozone country waiting for a bailout: buried deep inside a report on Russia’s booming underground economy and illicit oil money is a gem: the flows and amounts of Russian “black money” into and out of Cyprus. They’re huge. Read.... Cyprus, ‘A Money Laundering Machine For Russian Criminals’.
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Its why I moved to Germany.
Irrespective of what happens to the Germans, their quality of life is always superior to that of the people around them. Try your thesis again.
(No where to run, except the Nordic and Germanic countries .... and Russia if you've invested in Gold)
Are you kidding, compared to every other large country or union on Earth, the U.S. is in far better shape. We are the prettiest girl in the leper colony. As much as we complain about Obama, he is Abraham Fucking Lincoln compared to the Euro politicians. China is an order of magnitude more corrupt and polluted and malinvested than the U.S. India? Forget about it. They will run out of food and water before they get their population growth under control, and they have no energy resources whatsoever. Japan? no energy, declining population, incompetent politicians. Russia? They may be the only large country in better shape than the U.S, but how successful can a country be that is run by a mafia oligarchy? The U.S. may be fat and lazy, but we produce 6 million barrels of oil a day and are food and water-independent. I'm a pretty shitty gambler generally speaking, but I would make a fortune taking the over on your "two years" prediction.
Absolutely. This is an 'american' world and a US world order.
The US market is the ultimate consumption sink as thought and wished by 'americans'.
All the other places in the world are going to be drained in order to sustain consumption in the US.
When all the places outside the US are drained, that will be another story.
But this point has not been reached yet.
Keep your chips on the ganglord's turf when an extortion of the weak, farming of the poor scheme is ran.
Best place to be protected from the ganglord's doings.
The current crisis has nothing to do with peak oil, global warming or the fiscal cliff, but everything to do with Central Banks using fiat, corporate money centers and the corrupt governments that allow them all to exist. Get a clue Steve.
Thank you, sir.
Humanity needs people like you. You are the salt of the Earth.
For seconds, my American faith was shaken. I thought that we, Americans, could be forced to show that we can overcome the environment. The idea of proving our says froze my blood.
Your message warmed my heart and my American natural confidence came back.
If it is just about central banks, corporate money and corrupt governments, or even human nature nothing to be frightened of.
We, Americans, will prevail.
Let's purge the system, I say.
Signed: an American.
the car's about all i'll have left once they're done with this looting spree...
The bankster's corruption is so bad that it is attracting asteroids. Another big one flew over San Francisco. All in different orbits.
I suggest we do something about the banksters before it is too late.
You scare me, sir.
Good piece. This has been all over Spanish television.
The Spanish people have been unbelievably calm so far, but i would not be surprised if there would be some major protests in Spain in the near future.
Interesting interview in English about the situation in Spain.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrPi8pbqEE8&feature=youtu.be
spainish peoples have a long history of brutality. circa 15thcentury out of mex city spreading the word of god...
spain is awake-finally...not sure how this goes; turmiol from many fronts-but easy to pin point blame-banksters with politicos...
now if the people can/have the will to prosecute? any which way..
You can trust 'Americans' to exterminate weaker than them.
But taking on their superiors? When in 'american' history did this happened?
This simple fact about 'american' nature warrants nothing determining will happen in Spain.
What Spanish will run to do, it is to blob into the European People, as 'Americanism' demands.
Easy to tell of the future when one does not deny the 'american' nature.
The national scale "Dorners" are out there.
They will recognize their chance at "15 minutes of fame" for eliminating corruption as patriotism.
I wonder if Harry Reid's name will show up?
Soon the bodies will start dropping.
The only bodies that will start dropping are the bodies of lesser people 'americans' will eliminate in order to comfort themselves in an illusion of power.
'Americans' have no choice, since a long time ago: either they rule or they disappear.
Everything is falling apart. And now the political and business elite are trying to find a way out. This is going to be a major hit on the Spanish govt. and people.
"This is going to be a major hit on the Spanish govt. and people."
Spanish people and gov't? How about globally? This is their "King Ferdinand" moment.
Nothing will happen, just like here. Bribes, kickbacks, govt. corruption......
I'm sure many Spaniards all meet on some blog and whine about it.
Maybe even wonder when the SWHTF in the USA because of the same behavior.