Former Balearic premier faces jail as corruption trial gets underway

Jaume Matas, the two-time premier of the Balearic Islands, will sit on the dock on Monday to face the first of his trials over the Palma Arena case, involving wrongdoing during the building of a cycle track in Palma de Mallorca in 2007.

Matas, who was also an environment minister with the center-right Popular Party (PP) between 2000 and 2003, faces a total of 12 criminal charges ranging from embezzlement to influence peddling, tax fraud and money laundering.

In this first trial, Matas, 57, faces eight-and-a-half years in prison for spending nearly half a million euros of public money to pay a journalist to set up a media network that would create a favorable climate for him and his administration. Five other people face charges in connection with the same case, including the journalist Antonio Alemany, three former Matas aides in the Balearic government and a businessman.

Alemany allegedly wrote Matas' speeches, then hailed them in the column he wrote for the newspaper El Mundo. He also set up an online newspaper, Libertad Balear, and a news agency, Agencia Balear de Noticias, with money he received from the Balearic government without participating in open competitions for the contracts. The attorney accuses Matas of "bypassing legal channels to pay Alemany undercover" through a front company.