Spanish ruling party fined for kickbacks

Businessmen, party officials get decades in jail

MADRID • The conviction of more than two dozen Spanish businesspeople and officials in a major corruption scandal triggered political turmoil Thursday after the court ruled that the country’s governing party benefited from the biggest kickbacks-for-contracts scheme in four decades of democratic rule.

The National Court’s decision is a significant blow for Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s Popular Party, which was fined $370,000 over the illegal scheme that was in place between 1999 and 2005. It is the first such conviction for a Spanish political party.

The leader of the Ciudadanos party that has so far backed the PP in parliament announced that his party will consider revising its support, saying Thursday’s judicial decision “changes everything.”

“The situation is grave because Spaniards deserve stability, but also cleanliness,” Albert Rivera said.

Francisco Correa, the businessman considered the scheme’s mastermind, was sentenced to nearly 52 years in prison, while Luis Barcenas — who was the Popular Party’s accountant for three decades and a PP senator — received a sentence of 33 years and was ordered to pay around $100 million in fines.

A panel of three judges also fined a former health minister and close aide to Rajoy, Ana Mato, for accepting gifts, but didn’t find any wrongdoing by current members of the government.

The party immediately announced it would appeal the part of the verdict that found it was a profit-seeking participant in the scheme.

The prime minister’s office also said in a statement that nobody in the current administration or in the party’s leadership “was aware, and even less covered up, any irregular practice” and that Thursday’s verdict is a civil fine that “expressly implies the lack of knowledge and therefore the absolute absence of any criminal responsibility.”

Rajoy, who last year became the first Spanish prime minister in office to testify as a witness, had told the court he wasn’t aware of the party’s accounting practices when the illegal funding scheme was in place.

Rajoy was the party’s vice secretary general and then its secretary general until 2004.

Altogether, 29 of 37 defendants in the case were convicted on Thursday for tax evasion, fraud, money laundering, misuse of public funds and abuse of power, among other crimes, and sentenced to a total of 351 years in prison.

In a ruling of nearly 1,700 pages, the court acquitted eight of the defendants. One of the three magistrates said that four more should be acquitted and voted against convicting PP as a beneficiary of the scheme.