CORRUPTION IN SPAIN
Here's a commentary on the Caso Blasco by a Spanish observer:
If all cases of corruption are inherently
repulsive, that of Rafael Blasco, the politician who has ruled and who has had most influence in Valencia for more than
30 years, and who on Wednesday was sentenced by the Valencian
High Court to 8 years in prison for embezzlement of public funds,
influence peddling, breach of trust and falsifying official
administrative documents is particularly repulsive.
Especially repulsive because it was, according to
the Court, the head of an organised racket that ransacked economic
international cooperation funds, funds that should have been directed
to set up a food plan and build water wells in Nicaragua as well as
the installation of a hospital in Haiti after the earthquake. The
latter case will be judged next week. And especially repulsive
because, when he controlled this looting, he was responsible for
development aid as a director of Solidaridad.
Repulsive because corruption in politics is
morally and ethically repulsive. Repulsive because we are talking
about a politician who began as a supporter of FRAP (The Antifascist
and Revolutionary Patriotic Front), a terrorist organisation, and
ended as a Popular Party henchman, first to Eduardo Zaplana first
and, later, to Francisco Camps, then joined the PSOE, developing a
close collaboration with the socialist president Joan Lerma.
The judgment considers it proved that Blasco,
ex-spokesman and ex-counsellor of the Popular Party in the Valencian
Parliament, ran the grants procedure and pressured officials.
And that, if there were resistance, he replaced people with those he could trust
to, in violation of the laws, grant subventions to a foundation
run by the fraudsters, which were then used to make numerous property
developments. The decision is the first piece in the Cooperation
case, a macro-case which has several separate elements
In the first of these elements, there will be an
investigation of irregularities in awarding grants by the defunct
Cyes Foundation in 2008, which received €1.6m for 2 projects in
Nicaragua, of which only €43,000 arrived at their destination, with the rest going on the purchase of properties in Valencia as
well on the payment of 400,000 to a businessman, Augusto César
Tauroni, considered to be one of the leaders of the fraud.
The Division of Criminal and Civil Superior Court
of Justice of the Valencian Community (TSJCV ) considers the
ex-counsellor, Rafael Blasco "director" of the fraud, who
diverted public funds meant for International Cooperation, acting in
concert with businessman Augusto César Tauroni, who has also been
sentenced to 8 years in prison, while the other 7 defendants will
have to serve 3 to 4 years in prisons.
Finally, to get an indication of the moral
standing of the Valencian politician, who has not yet resigned from
the regional parliament attached to the mixed group (the third
largest parliamentary group formed by office-holders of Valencian PP
prosecuted for corruption), you have to listen to the recordings made
by police during the investigations, in which one hears the gang
members refer to countries earmarked for public funds as "Negrolandia " and stating flatly: "We must give priority to
ourselves ahead of the niggers."