Juan Bernardo Fuentes, in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Spain, 22 March 2023. RAMÓN DE LA ROCHA v EFE
Bribes, prostitutes and cocaine. A hundred days before the local and regional elections in May and ten months before the parliamentary elections, the governing Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) in Madrid would have gladly dropped the revelations of the “Mediador” affair.
These “gifts,” according to investigators, were paid by several business leaders to a socialist MP, Canary Islands Juan Bernardo Fuentes — better known as “Tito Berni,” and to a retired Civil Guard general, Francisco Espinosa, in exchange for facilities obtaining public contracts, an acceleration of European subsidy acts, the cancellation of fines or other privileges. You’ve been making headlines in the Spanish press for a week.
The People’s Party (PP, right) and the far-right formation Vox have announced their intention to take a civil case to court and called for the establishment of a parliamentary commission of inquiry “to restore parliament to its dignity”. specified the President of the PP, Alberto Nuñez Feijoo, who described the affair as an “ethical bombshell” for the PSOE.
The investigation revealed that several business leaders cited in the alleged corruption network were received by Mr Fuentes in the House of Representatives. And the shabby details of the prostitutes’ “catalogues” offered to those involved are being made public, just as the Social Democrats are working on an anti-trafficking and exploitation law aimed at abolishing prostitution.
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Aware of the dangers of such a scandal on the eve of the election, the PSOE expelled Mr Fuentes and urged him to give up his seat in Parliament the same day his name emerged among those involved. “When a political leader commits an act that does not meet the criteria of excellence required by the PSOE, the act is clear: expulsion from the party and withdrawal of mandate,” said Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez. He himself came to power in 2018 after a no-confidence motion against conservative Mariano Rajoy triggered by the PP’s conviction in a corruption scandal. “I want other parties to do the same,” he slipped.
A climate of high political tension
PSOE spokesmen have tried to push back the right to its own depravity, recalling the cases of interference involving their elected officials or the suspected legacy of Marbella Mayor Angeles Muñoz, whose husband and son-in-law are accused of drug trafficking and money laundering “The Mediador affair is disgusting and pathetic, but it hits a minor grassroots MP and there is nothing else besides him,” one Socialist MP told Le Monde on condition of anonymity.
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