BBC News, 9
July 2013
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Stories
- Spanish party's ex-treasurer in jail
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- Q&A: Spanish corruption scandal
Mariano Rajoy has denied receiving illegal payments |
El Mundo
said it had original ledger entries handwritten by the former treasurer of the
governing Popular Party (PP), Luis Barcenas.
It said it
had delivered the documents to the High Court.
Mr Rajoy
and other PP members have repeatedly denied that they received illegal
payments.
Another
Spanish paper, El Pais, published similar documents earlier this year.
It is
claimed that Mr Barcenas ran a PP slush fund that took donations from
construction magnates and distributed them to party leaders in cash.
Mr Barcenas
is in custody facing trial for corruption and tax fraud. He denies the allegations.
However, in
an interview published in El Mundo on Sunday, Mr Barcenas for the first time
admitted that the handwriting in the ledger was his.
He added
that the photocopies originally published by El Pais were a fraction of the
documents he had in his possession.
El Mundo
said the documents it had seen showed that Mr Rajoy received payments in 1997,
1998 and 1999 when he was a minister in the government of Jose Maria Aznar.
They
included, it said, two payments to Mr Rajoy of 2.1m pesetas (12,600 euros;
£11,000) in 1998.
Luis Barcenas has been denied bail pending his trial |
Spanish
opposition leader Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba in February called on Mariano Rajoy
to resign over the allegations.
"The
Luis Barcenas originals published by El Mundo today pulverise the alibi used
until now by the PP to deny the authenticity of its ex-treasurer's
papers," El Mundo said.
The PP
responded with a statement saying: "The Popular Party reiterates that it
does not know of the notes nor their content, and it does not in any way
recognise them as the accounts of this political organisation."
This is
another twist in possibly the most important corruption scandal to hit modern
Spanish politics, says the BBC's Tom Burridge in Madrid.
The
allegations have caused anger among Spaniards already suffering a deep and long
recession and biting austerity cuts.
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