Bloomberg subjects Rajoy to rare grilling about Bárcenas slush fund case

Mariano Rajoy spent an uncomfortable few minutes with Sara Eisen in New York on Thursday, as the Bloomberg journalist pressed the prime minister over the Bárcenas affair.

Rajoy has done his best to avoid publicly commenting on the alleged system organized by ex-Popular Party (PP) treasurer Luis Bárcenas of irregular payments and cash bonuses that has rocked his center-right administration. He offered the interview to the Bloomberg network with the aim of broadcasting globally the incipient recovery in Spain’s economy, but was met with a barrage of questions on the PP’s financial scandal, the object of an ongoing judicial investigation. Eisen even asked Rajoy if he would step down if evidence emerges that any of the three PP general election campaigns he has headed up were illegally funded.

"There are things that cannot be shown and so it doesn't make any sense to say can you show this or you can't, because there was no illegal financing," replied Rajoy.

The answer was an interesting one because — as Spanish opposition politicians have eagerly noted — it sounds like a return to Rajoy’s initial response when Bárcenas was first implicated in the corruption affair, when said that “no one would be able to prove” his guilt. Since that time, the prime minister has been careful to take a less obviously cagey tone, preferring to emphasize his own ignorance of any wrongdoing. And the flat denial of illegal financing is somewhat at odds with what former party leaders have already told Judge Pablo Ruz: that there was “a lack of control” in the party’s finances.

I have no idea of any destruction of evidence being carried out"

Eisen then grilled the prime minister over the missing hard disks from two computers used by the former treasurer at party headquarters, which were requested by the judge investigating the Bárcenas case, and asked if he would fire whoever was responsible. "I have no idea of any destruction of evidence being carried out," he said. "I don't know if they were there, if they had been there, or if someone removed them. I absolutely do not know."

Earlier in the interview, Eisen asked Rajoy to clarify comments he made in February when he denied the existence of a slush fund.

"Everything that has been said about me and my colleagues is untrue, except for some things," he said at the time.

"Well, it seems that some of his notes were true, but the vast majority of them aren't," Rajoy told the reporter. "We had a five-hour debate in parliament last August when I talked about the position of my party with the parliamentary groups, which is now in the hands of the courts. And not a single person has been charged."

Official sources from network the Bloomberg have told EL PAÍS that members of the prime minister’s advisory team asked producers not to broadcast the section of the interview relating the Bárcenas affair. According to those sources, Bloomberg refused to do so for reasons of “journalistic integrity.”