EXPLAINED: Fresh corruption scandal hits Spain's opposition party

Local Spain

5 days ago

Another week, another major corruption scandal rocking the upper-echelons of Spanish politics.
As The Local has covered in detail, ongoing corruption allegations surrounding Spanish Prime Minister Sánchez's inner-circle have in recent months left his government teetering on the edge. For many political pundits, it was a question of when rather than if the government would fall.
Allegations against Sánchez's wife, brother, attorney general and two former right-hand men made his position seem untenable and opposition parties have furiously demanded his resignation and called for early elections.
But now the Spanish right has been implicated in its own major corruption network. The opposition Partido Popular (PP), who were until last week making great use of the scandals as a political weapon, has found itself engulfed in their own rather embarrassing set of allegations that threatens to undo all that political momentum and, infuriatingly for them, hand Sánchez and the Spanish left a lifeline just when they thought he couldn't fight on for much longer.
Cristóbal Montoro, Spain's former Finance Minister in the right-wing Rajoy government of 2011-2015 that preceded Sánchez, has been charged with creating "a network of influence" and taking kickbacks to favour gas companies that hired his law firm. He previously also served as Finance Minister in the Aznar government.
Montoro is among more than 20 accused, including senior treasury officials, of receiving at least €11 million from energy companies for favourable government policy.
Back in 2004 when the PP lost power to the Socialists (PSOE), Montoro left his post. He briefly became a Member of the European Parliament that same year, and in 2006 he founded a law firm, initially called Montoro y Asociados, later renamed Equipo Económico, with four former senior officials from his ministry. That firm is now at the centre of the plot.
Montoro returned to national politics as an MP in 2008 and left the firm. In 2011, the PP returned to power and Montoro was once again appointed Minister of Finance. During this time, Montoro's former office and his partners allegedly influenced several senior ministerial appointments.
This allegedly led to changes in legislation, centring on lowered tax commitments, to benefit gas companies that were clients of Montoro's firm, according to the court order accessed by Spanish daily El País: "In exchange for significant payments, they intervened decisively in legislative reforms [...] in accordance with the interests of their clients," it says.
The investigation, which is still underway, has also found evidence that Equipo Económico charged 'commissions' from electricity and renewable energy companies to 'influence the decisions' of the government.
The Guardian reports that Rajoy was told of Montoro's alleged dealings but did not take action.
In the short-term, the investigations have wrong footed the current PP leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo's main political attack line by allowing Sánchez and the Spanish left to claim the Spanish right is the real party of corruption, or at the very least that their attack lines are hollow and hypocritical.
Crucially, the allegations give Sánchez some breathing room as he tries to sure up support among his parliamentary partners and ensure his government lasts a full second term. Elections aren't slated in Spain until 2027.
However, that both of Spain's two great partidos del estado are simultaneously caught up in serious corruption allegations does little to help long-held political disenchantment among Spanish voters.
It likely boosts the far-right, too. Dissatisfaction with Spain's two main parties gives greater opportunity for far-right Vox, surging in the polls already, to portray the Spanish system as broken and in need of something new.