Luis Bárcenas

Career

Luis Bárcenas started working in the accounting department of the People's Party in 1990, and become the chief administrator of the party in 1993. In 2008, the president of the party, Mariano Rajoy, personally chose him as Treasurer to replace Álvaro Lapuerta. He pursued a parallel career as a politician, and in 2004 and 2008 was elected to represent Cantabria in the Senate. His time as treasurer was short, as he "temporarily" resigned in 2009 when his implication in the Gürtel scandal became too much of a public embarrassment for the party.

Evidence obtained by police referred to payments to an individual known by the alias of "Luis el cabrón", and this was claimed to be Barcenas. He was accused of "tax fraud and of receiving illegal payments". Bárcenas stood down from the Senate in 2010, and his resignation as treasurer was made definitive, but until early 2013 he retained access to an office at the PP headquarters and continued to receive payments from the party equivalent to his salary, under circumstances which are disputed.

The controversy around him further flared up in January 2013, when investigations into the Gürtel case revealed that he held a Swiss bank account that had contained €22 million. (It later emerged that he controlled significant further funds in that country). Additionally, he admitted using the 2012 tax amnesty voted by the PP to legalize €10 million hidden through a Uruguayan company.

The Bárcenas papers

In 2013 Spain's two main dailies, El Mundo (center-right) and El País (center-left), alleged that the PP had used unofficial parallel accounting to hide slush money from illegal donations. Two former treasurers, Bárcenas and his predecessor Lapuerta, allegedly used these illegal donations in part "to make under-the-table payments to PP leaders". The donations in question appeared to contravene party financing laws on two counts: first, for exceeding the 60,000-euro limit for any one individual or company; second, many alleged donors were involved in the construction sector and were simultaneously being awarded government contracts. However, there were indications that measures had been taken to keep donations within the letter of the law.

El País published facsimiles of handwritten "secret ledgers" (purportedly in Bárcenas' hand) suggesting that Mariano Rajoy, the Prime Minister of Spain, María Dolores de Cospedal, the Secretary-General of the People's Party, and many other high ranking PP officials, received undeclared money. Initially all implicated politicians, including Bárcenas, strongly denied any wrongdoing. However, in July 2013, shortly after Bárcenas' imprisonment, El Mundo reported that Bárcenas accepted that there had been irregular funding of the People's Party.

There has been speculation that the money Bárcenas kept in Switzerland was connected to party funding, but this has been denied by Bárcenas and the People's Party. Bárcenas said that the money in question came from his own business interests. One of these interests was claimed to be art dealing, supposedly a cash rich activity.

Imprisonment, release on bail and trial

Facing a range of charges including tax fraud and money-laundering, on June 27, 2013 Bárcenas was sent to prison pending trial. The decision not to grant bail was taken by judge Pablo Ruz to "avoid the risk of flight and ensure the preservation of sources of evidence".

Bárcenas was released on bail in January 2015. Judge Ruz had announced the previous summer that he was in a position to proceed against 45 Gurtel suspects, including Bárcenas.

The trial began in October 2016. The case having been divided into different "epochs", the initial proceedings were in respect of crimes allegedly committed in the period 1999-2005.