Spanish ex-minister on trial accused of spying to protect party

MADRID (AFP) — A week of legal reckoning for Spain’s two main political groups began Monday as a former conservative interior minister went on trial for allegedly spying on an ex-party treasurer who threatened to expose corruption.

The case against Jorge Fernandez Diaz, who served between 2011 and 2016 under ex-Popular Party (PP) Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, comes before another high-profile trial that has further damaged the ruling Socialists and public confidence in Spain’s political class.

Fernandez Diaz and former senior interior ministry officials are accused of a plot to spy on and silence ex-PP Treasurer Luis Barcenas, using public money and without any legal basis.

Barcenas, who served as party treasurer until 2009, was taken into pretrial detention in 2013 for irregularities in PP accounts and had threatened to reveal secrets about illegal party financing because he did not feel sufficiently supported.

In an interview published in El Mundo daily on Saturday, Barcenas said it was “impossible that an operation of this kind was carried out without the knowledge of the party’s highest authorities.” He did not mention Rajoy by name.

The affair combined with other corruption cases that tainted and ultimately toppled Rajoy’s government in 2018 and brought current Socialist premier Pedro Sanchez to power.

Prosecutors are seeking 15 years in jail for Fernandez Diaz for charges including embezzlement and breaching privacy.

The trial in Spain’s top criminal court, the Audiencia Nacional, is due to last three months and hear from more than 100 witnesses, including Rajoy, Barcenas and senior PP officials at the time.

On Tuesday, former Socialist transport minister Jose Luis Abalos, once Sanchez’s right-hand man, goes on trial for alleged corruption in the procurement of masks during the Covid-19 pandemic, in a case that has cast doubt on the minority government’s future.

—

By Agence France-Presse