Top former officials targeted in new Balearic Islands graft probe

An alleged illegal financing scheme that may have benefited the Popular Party (PP) in the Balearics Islands is the focus of new inquiry by a top anti-corruption prosecutor and a local judge who have been conducting wide-scale investigations into fraud and graft conspiracies that took place during the regional government headed by ex-premier Jaume Matas.

Several top former officials in Matas’ administration, including three of his commissioners and a host of businessmen, are the targets of this investigation, according to judicial sources. One of the angles being looked at is that kickbacks went directly to the PP’s coffers. These payments were reportedly made by those who received preferential treatment when it came to the awarding of public contracts.

The prosecutor, Pedro Horrach, and the judge, José Castro, are the same top investigators who are delving into a separate corruption case involving Iñaki Urdangarin, King Juan Carlos’ son-in-law, who is facing fraud charges for allegedly diverting public money assigned to a non-profit institute to his private businesses.

Matas, who served from 1996 to 199 and again from 2003 to 2007 with a spell as a PP minister in Madrid in between, was sentenced to six years in prison last March by the Palma de Mallorca High Court following his conviction for fraud, influence peddling, embezzlement, falsifying documents and dereliction of his public duties in connection with the so-called Palma Arena case. He remains free on 2.5-million-euro bail as his lawyers file an appeal with the Supreme Court.

Judge Castro and prosecutor Horrach have traveled to Madrid to take statements in this new offshoot case, which appears to have similar characteristics to what occurred in the Gürtel kickback-for-contracts conspiracy, where a group of influential businessmen won tenders put out by local PP governments in Valencia, Madrid and Castilla-La Mancha in exchange for payoffs.

The investigation began in 2010 after authorities uncovered scores of documents during raids conducted at Balearic government offices and the warehouses of different advertising firms.