Court compares Matas to cruise ship captain

In Tuesday's session of the Palma Arena corruption trial, the public prosecutor accused Jaume Matas, the "unscrupulous" former regional premier of the Balearic Islands, of blatant but unacknowledged "looting of public funds."

The prosecutor, Pedro Horrach, has asked for a jail term of eight-and-a-half years for Matas and seven for Antonio Alemany, a journalist used by the former premier to write speeches for him who is alleged to have illegally received money secretly syphoned from the region's coffers.

Referring to the Italian captain who abandoned the shipwrecked Costa Concordia on a rescue boat off the coast of Italy while passengers still remained on board, Horrach said: "To sum up what happened: Mr Matas and Mr Alemany fell into a lifeboat that just happened to be passing by."