High Court assumes jurisdiction in the investigation into Bárcenas’ ledgers

The High Court on Thursday opened an inquiry into the ledgers allegedly kept by former Popular Party treasurer Luis Bárcenas that show fat bonuses going to top PP officials.

Judge Pablo Ruz assumed jurisdiction in the case after the police’s UDEF financial crimes unit told the High Court that there could be links between the ledgers and records kept by private businessmen targeted in the sprawling Gürtel contracts-for-kickbacks inquiry that has ensnarled the PP.

In a 35-page report given to High Court Judge Pablo Ruz on Wednesday, UDEF investigators demonstrate a series of connections in documents confiscated as part of the Gürtel investigation and the line items in the balance sheets that recorded payouts to the PP’s upper echelon, including Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy.

The PP has filed a defamation lawsuit against EL PAÍS, which published the Bárcenas papers on January 31, while secretary general María Dolores De Cospedal is suing Bárcenas after her name was also linked to bonuses from a party slush fund in the published ledgers.

Judge Ruz ordered anticorruption prosecutors to halt their inquiry into the ledgers, which also record large donations contributions from businessmen and corporations, so that he can assume jurisdiction in the investigation. The UDEF report to the judge states that there “exists a temporal, quantitative and subjective connection that permits us to deduce an interrelationship between both entries.”

The PP has filed a defamation lawsuit against EL PAÍS, which published the Bárcenas papers on January 31

Among the massive amount of documents confiscated by authorities in the Gürtel case are accounting records that show payments coming in from ghost companies allegedly set up by indicted businessman Francisco Correa, his partner Pablo Crespo and other individuals who received large contracts from local PP governments in Madrid, Valencia and Castilla-La Mancha.

One of the coincidences are records found in a safe box in Crespo’s possession on February 2009 that show double billing for PP campaign rallies in the regional and municipal races of 1997 and 1999. There is an entry that shows a handover of some 21 million pesetas (126,000 euros) to the “national headquarters” in May 2009.

In the Bárcenas papers, the same amount is reflected in a line item that reads “P. Crespo.”

Crespo was the former secretary general of the PP in Galicia who investigators believe was Correa’s right-hand man.

Another connection was found in records found in the home of José Luis Izquierdo, Correa’s alleged accountant, which show payments and expenses between April and October 1999 for the PP’s campaign in Galicia of that year. One of the entries was from Alfonso García Pozuelo, president of the building firm Constructora Hispánica, for nine million pesetas (54,000 euros). Police found similar entries in Bárcenas’ records that reflect some 12 million pesetas (72,000 euros) in January, July and November 2000.

The Attorney General’s Office had stated that the High Court should open a separate investigation into the PP ledgers, but Judge Ruz had been waiting for the UDEF report before taking any action.