THE judge handling the Bárcenas slush-fund case has closed his investigations and says he has 'adequate proof' of an 'underground' accounting system within the PP party at national level, despite president Mariano Rajoy and his second-in-command María Dolores del Cospedal having repeatedly denied this.
Two years of inquiries, during which former PP treasurer Luis Bárcenas was jailed for 19 months before being released pending trial, has led judge Pablo Ruz to the conclusion that undeclared cash operations were being carried out within the party between the years 1990 and 2008.
Ruz says the party had 'flouted limits, requirements and conditions established by law' against the tax office 'constantly and systematically' for 18 years.
He has dropped charges against 22 business-owners accused of making donations to the PP in cash, recorded outside of the 'official' accounts and paid as under-the-mattress wage top-ups to high-ranking members of the party.
Spain's tax authority, Hacienda, has likened donations to the party to those made to Cáritas, the Red Cross or any other 'charity', and insists they are not illegal per se.
But in some cases, Ruz considers it is clear the donations count as bribes.
A donation of €200,000 in cash by the construction firm Sacyr was made to Toledo city hall in Castilla-La Mancha, whose regional president María Dolores del Cospedal is also secretary-general of the national government.
This appears to coincide with an affiliate of Sacyr being granted a lucrative public works contract - rubbish collection and disposal - leap-frogging the usual impartial public bidding process.
Ruz has handed this case to Toledo court to deal with.
Two aspects of the trial which Ruz considers to be financial crimes include Bárcenas' predecessor Álvaro Lapuerta having taken money from the clandestine cash pot for his own personal use and with Bárcenas' knowledge, meaning both could be found guilty of undue appropriation of funds, and also the tax fraud involved in renovations carried out on the PP headquarters on the C/ Génova in Madrid.
The PP is said to have paid the renovation firm, Unifica, a total of €1,552,000 in undeclared cash.
Additionally, the PP did not declare donations it received for the purposes of company tax payments between 1990 and 2008 inclusive, but these offences are now considered to have expired under Spain's statute of limitations, except for those committed in 2008 itself.
Despite Hacienda insisting that these donations were tax-exempt in the same way as funds given to a charity would be, Ruz requested continually that the total amount be calculated to see whether it would qualify as a criminal or a civil offence.
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