Former PP manager admits being paid money from undeclared donations

Cristóbal Páez, a former finance manager of the ruling Popular Party between 2009 and 2010, told the judge handling the Bárcenas case that he had received money from the party that came from illegal donations to the PP which were not declared to the taxman.

Judge Pablo Ruz is conducting an investigation into allegations by former PP treasurer Bárcenas that he kept secret legers in which he detailed illegal donations made to the party and cash payments for party officials, including Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, who has denied receiving money under the table.

According to a transcript of remarks made to Judge Ruz, Páez said he received money from the PP between the end of the 1980s and the mid-1990s for advisory work in labor affairs for the party and later as manager of the PP. “I received money without a receipt from donations that weren’t declared,” Páez said. Páez was Bárcenas’ right-hand man between 2004 and 2009.

I received money without a receipt from donations that weren’t declared”

Páez also said that Bárcenas continued to work for the PP after abandoning his party membership and seat in the Senate in April 2010 after the Supreme Court had implicated him in the Gürtel kickbacks-for-contracts case, of which the Bárcenas affair is an offshoot.

The leader of the main opposition Socialist Party, Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba, on Wednesday said that Páez’s statement shows that “Bárcenas’ [ledgers] are true and proof that Rajoy also received money under the table.”

The Socialists have accused Rajoy of having lied in Congress about his relationship with Bárcenas and about the alleged receipt of cash payments from him. In comments to radio station Cadena Ser, Rubalcaba said his party did not ruling out a censure motion against Rajoy because “the prime minister lied in parliament.”

Rubalcaba also said his party would ask the courts to launch an investigation into how two computers used by Bárcenas while he still worked for the PP, and which allegedly contained more information about his hidden ledgers, had their hard disks removed before being handed over to Judge Ruz at his request.