Madrid is a capital city with a double key condition with which to nurture and institutionalise economic and political corruption. On the one hand, it is one of the country's most important economic centres, and on the other, it is also the seat of political powers and the highest state institutions. These are perfect conditions for creating and making viral the harmful effects of influence peddling in line with illicit enrichment. Behaviour that has escaped the control of state bodies.
The corruption cases currently being prosecuted and investigated in Madrid, around a hundred, are part of the 1,700 cases that in the first quarter of 2015 were still alive in Spain. The same that left around five hundred people under investigation. Despite this volume, only around twenty of them had been convicted or were in prison on the same date, a lot of work for the law firms in Madrid.
The Bárcenas and Gurtel cases
The Bárcenas case is by far the most important corruption affair of all those ongoing in Madrid, a paradigm, both for its political significance and for the extent to which its revelations may affect the credibility and political future of the Popular Party and some of its key leaders.
The Bárcenas case is a separate extension of the Gürtel case, the alleged illegal financing of the Popular Party in Valencia that has ramifications in Madrid. It was the newspaper ‘El Mundo’ which in mid-January 2013 revealed that José Luis Bárcenas, former treasurer of the Partido Popular, was for two decades in charge of distributing envelopes with varying amounts of money to executives, public officials and different members of the Partido Popular organisation.
It was B money, not formally accounted for, which came from donations, construction companies and security firms. According to the first publications, the practices ceased in 2009, although subsequent information revealed that President Rajoy and other members of the party's leadership allegedly continued to receive such bonuses, in this case, also paid by businessmen.
A subsequent police report found that several presidents of construction companies gave the party, as gifts, 3.5 million euros, more than the allowed amount, which were processed by the Popular Party's accountant as donations. In return, these construction companies also allegedly received contracts for a total value of more than 12 billion euros in the different governments of the Partido Popular.
Bárcenas is currently on conditional release with charges, having paid a bail of 200,000 euros imposed by the judge, and awaiting trial.
Caja Madrid's Black
The Caja Madrid Black cards case was reported in the media at the end of 2014 and revealed that most of the directors of the bank, which later became Bankia, took advantage of the bank's high-end credit cards for personal expenses. The charges were credited against a fund intended to cover unforeseen expenses that never appeared on the bank's balance sheets.
The calls ‘Visa Black’ were detected following the publication of more than 8,000 e-mails exchanged between the chairman Miguel Blesa, different managers of the institution and important figures in Spanish politics and business.
The e-mails were given anonymously to a political party that brought them to the attention of a digital media. The e-mails could not be used to accuse those who had fraudulently used the cards because they were part of a previous case, the case of Caja Madrid's preferential loans, another of the corruption cases uncovered in Madrid.
What the publication of the texts of the key emails did achieve was that the chairman of Bankia investigated and brought the facts to the attention of the public prosecutor's office, whose case is still being prosecuted.
The Little Nicholas phenomenon
Another scandal was the alleged irregular financing of the Complutense University of Madrid, the so-called Berzosa Case, in 2012, and in the same vein and still in the investigation phase, that of the wanderings of ‘Little Nicolás’.
Francisco Nicolás Gómez is the real name of a young man from Madrid linked to the youth of the Partido Popular who has become famous as the protagonist of a case of influence peddling and identity theft.
The young man infiltrated high-ranking state bodies and tried to put businessmen and politicians in contact with supposed government projects by posing as a spy for the CNI, as an economic mediator, while at the same time airing his relations with active politicians of the Popular Party and with members of the Royal House.
In addition to the Bankia, Black cards, Gürtel and Bárcenas cases, there is a wider series of organised corruption cases that are still under investigation or may be reopened at any time as a result of the discovery of connections between the cases.
These may be the ones that have revealed the modus operandi of other high-profile corruption cases in Madrid. For example, those related to city councils with Operation Púnica or that of Amy Martin, from 2013, with which the PSOE-linked Ideas Foundation was allegedly fraudulently financed. Amy Martin, a leading figure in the organisation, was actually a character created by the wife of Carlos Mulas, wife of the director of the socialist foundation.
Corruption and corruption of the highest and lowest order, which the proximity of key Spanish elections to reconfigure the new social majorities, will once again put in the headlines, in the ‘prime time’ of the media and at the centre of the national political debate.
