Elisa Menendez
A CASH payment for the prime minister’s suits, a €300,000 bung to a former treasurer and a backhander to pay for an elite wedding.
These are just three of the illegal ‘caja B’ cash payments made by the former PP party during Mariano Rajoy’s tenure.
Revealed in a series of hand-written notes and documents, kept by disgraced former PP treasurer Luis Barcenas, the notes demonstrate how the party was illegally funded on a national scale.
Dubbed the ‘Operacion Kitchen’ papers, the records have only now been made public, after being published in national newspaper El Mundo.
The secret dossier was allegedly stolen from Barcenas by police and not handed over to the courts in the recent Gurtel investigation into corruption.
A Madrid judge has now opened an ‘urgent enquiry’ to look into why these documents have only just been made public.
Judge Jose de la Mata has demanded the Home Office to explain how police and the PP party allegedly conspired to keep the papers hidden.
The documents were apparently stolen from Barcenas – currently serving 33 years in prison for creaming off €1.24m in bribes.
Barcenas instructed his wife to hide the huge dossier in their house inside furniture and his private offices.
However, she confided in the couple’s long-standing chauffeur where the documents were being hidden.
Unbeknown to them he had become a mole of the National Police, who got him to photocopy all the documents and hand them over.
The papers reveal how the police, under disgraced former chief Jose Villarejo, then shockingly chose to conceal the evidence from the judiciary.
Prime minister Mariano Rajoy became the first serving leader in Spain to testify in a criminal case when he was grilled on Gurtel’s dealings.
He always denied receiving cash payments.
