Former PP treasurer’s payoff may contravene Social Security rules

If it transpires that the Popular Party continued to pay Social Security contributions for former treasurer Luis Bárcenas from December 2010 until last month, it would have done so fraudulently.

After Bárcenas broke off working relations with the PP owing to his implication in the Gürtel kickbacks-for-contracts scandal, he no longer provided any professional services and therefore the party could not officially pay the contributions as though the former senator was a salaried worker.

Article 106 of the Social Security Law states that the obligation to pay a contracted worker's contributions is only active when an employee is registered within the system "or providing services, even of a discontinuous nature."

Under the law, when a worker leaves a company, in this case the PP, that company must report it to the Social Security office. Failure to do so constitutes two infractions termed as "serious" by the text of the legislation.

The first of these constitutes the "simulation of an employment contract in order to wrongfully obtain benefits," while the second is an offense of "falsification of documents so that workers can fraudulently receive benefits, as well as the connivance [of an employer] with its workers or with other beneficiaries for the receipt of unwarranted benefits."

"When we broke off relations with Mr Bárcenas, there was an agreement for a monthly compensation package," PP number three Carlos Floriano said on Wednesday. "That's it. Nothing more. That he was still inscribed with Social Security is quite an exercise in transparency."