Tailor sews doubt in Camps' dress suit payment story

The tailor, who told Gürtel case investigators that Francisco Camps never paid for any of his suits, testified on Monday that the former Valencia regional premier begged him to get him out of his current legal jam when he learned that anti-prosecutors were on his tail.

Camps phoned tailor José Tomás because he was concerned that some bills for his dress suits were in his name. "Get me out of this and when this is all over [...] you will never want for anything again," Tomás quoted Camps as promising.

The tailor who worked for the Madrid dress shops Milano and Forever Young is the prosecution's star witness in the Camps bribery trial. The former Popular Party (PP) premier is in the dock along with Ricardo Costa, the former PP secretary general in Valencia, for allegedly accepting suits from a group of businessmen who formed the so-called Gürtel network.

According to Tomás, Gürtel's point man in Valencia, Álvaro Pérez, told him not to "let it slip" that Camps never paid. "The only thing that mattered to Álvaro was that I never told anyone that these men he bought clothes for, never paid for them."