Illegal funding of Spain’s ruling party ‘amply demonstrated’, says prosecutor

The prosecutor investigating the “Gurtel” case, regarding the funding of the ruling People’s Party (PP) (the Spanish president’s party) stated that the PP's alternate, illegal bookkeeping system has been “amply demonstrated”. She also stressed that former PP leaders, who testified during the trial and denied the existence of illegal funding, don’t have enough credibility to deny the party's illegal accounting practices. According to her, PP’s leaders denied having received money from the alternate, illegal system because it was embarrassing and would confirm that the alleged illegal accounting existed. 

The prosecutor is investigating if the PP used a parallel bookkeeping system during many years to record undeclared and illegal cash donations and then used them to pay bonuses to senior members of the party. "The existence of an alternate bookkeeping system has been amply demonstrated by Barcenas’ papers,” said the prosecutor. The so-called Barcenas papers, extracts of handwritten accounts in which the former treasurer of the PP Luis Bárcenas wrote down the names of those who made donations and of the members of the party that received illegal bonuses, are one of the main sources of evidence that the Spanish judge is using to investigate the alternate bookkeeping.