Drinks on the house for the chief justice

On Monday the State Prosecutor’s Office “legalized” the unjustified use of taxpayers’ money, by refusing to investigate the reasons why the president of the General Council of the Judiciary, Carlos Dívar, charged almost 13,000 euros to the Council budget for expenses deriving from around 20 long weekends (of at least four days each) spent in luxury hotels in the upmarket seacoast town of Puerto Banús, near Marbella on the south coast of Spain.

This refusal sends out a deplorable message concerning the need for strict control of the use of public money, which comes at the worst possible moment, and may be interpreted by other authorities and people in high positions in the state as license to indulge in similar behavior in the future — that is, not troubling themselves with the justification of doubtful expenses. The Prosecutor’s Office does not even consider it necessary to contact the people whom Dívar claims to have visited on official business and ask them about the truth of these visits — lengthy visits that required an entourage of several bodyguards, also paid for with taxpayers’ money.

The justifications offered by the Prosecutor’s Office for its decision amount to taking it for granted that the Council president had no intention of pocketing an actual cash profit and that any “doubts” must be addressed while “keeping constantly in mind the prestige with which the post of Council chairman invests each and every one of the activities performed by the person holding the post.”

In plain language, if a senior authority does things that involve spending taxpayers’ money, he must have his reasons. So it’s drinks on the house for the chief. Some hours before the Prosecutor’s Office announced this decision, the Congress Bureau had vetoed the idea of organizing an appearance by the concerned party in front of the lower house, alleging that the case was “under judicial consideration.”

Just at the time when the rest of us are working out our income tax statements, the taxpayer will no doubt form his own judgment of this free-and-easy attitude to enforcing the correct use of public money. The average citizen is unlikely to swallow a story so heavily saturated with the suspicion that the president of the judiciary charged private expenditures to the public budget.

It is hard to remain indifferent to this case. The Council is a constitutional body charged, among other things, with supervising the ethical conduct of judges. Yet its president — who ought to be the first to show an exemplary attitude and exemplary behavior — brazens it out by saying that he has done nothing reprehensible, and that the sums spent on the weekends in question were “chicken feed.” The fiscal barrel, as we all know, is being scraped too near the bottom for it to be found unnecessary for a top judge to offer explanations concerning 20 long weekends spent in luxury hotels and restaurants at public expense.