Friends of Borges

George Sand
by Eugène Delacroix

"Believe in no other God than the one
who insists on justice
and equality among men."

"The artist vocation is to send
light into the human heart."
George Sand

Mendacidad [Mendacity], Max Roach (percusión) & Abbey Lincoln (vocalista)

2011

2010

The historic heritage of Majorca is today threaten by real estate's mafia of the type denounced in the excellent film by Jacques Audiard's "The beat that my heart skipped"

2009

Network of systematic corruption in Spain's People's Party (PP): He styled himself on fictional mafia godfather Vito Corleone and mixed with Spain's political high society, but now Francisco Correa faces jail as the alleged kingpin in a network of corruption at the heart of the country's main opposition group, the rightwing People's party. Spanish newspapers published details of cars, €20,000 (£18,455) watches and stacks of banknotes allegedly lavished on senior People's party politicians as Correa greased palms, laundered money and got rich on public contracts. Court documents allege that at least one senior party official received regular monthly payments from Correa's group, while others ended up with Jaguar and Infiniti sports cars or top of the range Franck Muller watches. Investigators estimate that 17 politicians received €5.5m between them. Madrid's national court has released a third of the evidence gathered so far: 17,000 pages of documents and transcripts of tape recordings of conversations between those allegedly involved. Correa rose to prominence as an organiser of People's party events in the years when former prime minister José María Aznar led the party. His connections inside the party allowed him to spread his influence and receive contracts from public bodies controlled by the party. He also took money from building firms that received contracts from party administrations in what investigators say may be proof of either bribery or illegal funding. His companies ran double-accounting, with a secret set of accounts tracking money of dubious origin or that was being hidden from tax authorities. "Mr Correa said that when I referred to him I should call him Don Vito," one of his accountants, José Luis Izquierdo, told investigators. Correa then appeared in the organisation's secret accounts as DVITO. Izquierdo said he had handed envelopes containing €120,000 and €240,000 to two People's party politicians. The alleged corruption extended into several regional governments, half a dozen town halls and, most dangerously, into the party's Madrid headquarters.Seven senior party officials, including the party treasurer, Luis Bárcenas, have resigned since details of the scandal began to leak six months ago. Several mayors, an MEP and a member of Madrid's regional parliament have also left their jobs, but Mariano Rajoy, the party leader, has failed to stem the political bloodshed. Yesterday he said his party was the victim. "This is a network of corruption that has taken advantage of the party," he said. Correa's association with Aznar's family has fascinated many Spaniards. While there is no suggestion that the Aznar family itself is implicated in corruption, Correa was a guest at the lavish wedding of the former prime minister's daughter Ana. Pictures of Correa in his tailcoat at the wedding are now routinely reproduced in the Spanish press as proof of how high he had risen up the political and social ladder. ...more in The Guardian

2007

Corruption is rife in Spain: Speculation of buildings, politic corruption of the Town Councils and City Councils, the destruction of the territories because of all the builds are making without stop. That is not a fundation of a "democracy" ...watch the video clicking on the screen

Watch how Majorca should be care for if local politicians would care to work honestly on behalf of citezens and common good.

2006

Spanish judges investigate more cases of corrupt local government:
[By Daniel González Herrera, Spain Editor, 4 December 2006]
According to Berlin-based Transparency International, Spain is among the more corrupt countries in the European Union. In its 2006 international survey the organisation put Spain in 23rd place. The well-known Marbella case, involving the mayor and other local government officers, is only the tip of the iceberg and at the root of it all is urban development fraud. The desire of the general public to gain access to a decent home, in accordance with the Spanish constitution, is in reality only a dream. Spain is one of the most difficult places in Europe to buy a home, the purchase of which requires 40 per cent of a family’s income over a 20-year period. But it is not a lack of housing that is the problem, but soaring house prices that have risen by 150 per cent in seven years, defying the laws of economics. During 2005, the number of dwellings built in Spain reached an amazing record of 800,000 homes, more than the United Kingdom, France and Germany combined for that year. It has produced levels of family debt never before seen in Spain. It is an immense problem. The Marbella case is the one best known internationally, but by far it is not the only one. In Spain today more than 150 instances of alleged corruption are under investigation in relation to urban development, with the certainty that there are many more still unknown to the public. The latest investigations relate to the municipalities of Majorca; Ciempozuelos, in Madrid and Telde, in Gran Canaria. ... Why are so many city councils in Spain so closely linked to urban development fraud? The main origin of corruption lies in the assignation of land for different uses, above all in the coastal cities and in the big municipalities. The law regulating land use is much older than the Spanish constitution. It was passed during the Franco dictatorship, and it favours corrupt practices. ...more in City Majors

Corruption in Spanish politics:
[from EURORESIDENTS, Friday, October 20, 2006]
Earlier reports that corruption in Spain could be in decline were rather optimistic if the number of possible cases of political corruption being reported by the Spanish media are anything to go by. The list seems to be endless, and every week lately new cases of possible bribes, illegal commission for building licences, unchallenged illegal building developments etc. come to light. Most of the corruption cases center around real estate speculation and development. Yesterday Cadena Ser reported that Spanish police had found 13,000 illegal constructions in Spain in the past year and a half. Here are just some of the corruption charges in the news at the moment: Corruption in Marbella: The biggest case of corruption to be uncovered in Spain so far. A police investigation into money laundering and drug trafficking in southern Spain codenamed operation white whale and involving phone tapping overheard conversations between politicians in Marbella which led to a parallel investigation being set up to investigate bribery, corruption, manipulation of public tenders and compensation for illegal building licences. Over 150 police participated in "Operation Malaya" and six months ago over 20 people were arrested, including the then Mayoress and Deputy Mayoress of Marbella. The investigation is still going on, and the profits made by people participating in this massive network of corruption is expected to be millions and millions of euros. Corruption in Madrid: The authorities of various town halls in the suburbs of Madrid are suspected of accepting commissions for allowing building to be developed on protected land, accepting commissions or being involved in the purchase of cheap land where building is not allowed, then modifying the urban laws so that building becomes legal, and then reselling the land for huge sums of money to property developers. Earlier this week it was revealed that an uncle of the President of the Region of Madrid made an enormous profit on land which was re-catagorised as building land shortly after he bought it a few years ago. Today El País publishes a conversation held 3 years ago in which a former PP councillor of Tres Cantos, Madrid, in reference to the concession by the Town Hall of a massive property development to a private company is reported as saying "I want my 11 percent of the 30,000 million" (pesetas)"Give me the dough and I'll go". According to el Pais, the ex-PP councillor has acknowleded the declarations but said they were made in the heat of the moment. Meanwhile the same paper today reports that two former mayors of another Madrid suburb, Ciempozuelos, this time from the Socialist party, recently paid 916,000 euros into personal bank accounts in a bank in Andorra. The PSOE party forced the current mayor to resign when the public prosecutor ordered an investigation into possible irregular operations in the urban policies of Ciempozuelos last week and the Socialist party has announced a "Zero-tolerance" policy on urban corruption on all sides. Corruption in Avila: Earlier this month building on a golf course in Avila was bought to a halt after ecologists protested that the developer - a private company set up by the local and regional administration - was ignoring a court order to stop cutting down trees in a protected area. And the list goes on.....
posted by Euroresidentes

Corruption Scandals Rock Spain:
[By Sinikka Tarvainen, Deutsche Presse Agentur]
Spain's touristic southern coast, the Costa del Sol, is known for the widespread corruption linked to its construction sector, but that has turned out to be only the tip of the iceberg. Municipalities around the country are mired in sleaze to the extent that the daily El Pais described corruption connected with urban planning as a "problem of state." Between 1990 and 2005, an average 800,000 houses or flats were built annually in Spain - a huge number compared to most other European countries. Many of them were hotels, holiday apartments or second residences built illegally with the connivance of corrupt officials, rather than ordinary homes to relieve the country's housing shortage. Spain currently has more than 100,000 houses or flats built with illegal or no permits, according to press reports. Within the past 1.5 years, the paramilitary Civil Guard have discovered an average of 24 illegal buildings per day, mostly in tourist areas. Officials from eastern Valencia and northern Cantabria to Madrid and the Canary Islands are suspected of accepting kickbacks in exchange for allowing property developers to erect hotels, golf courses, blocks of flats, department stores, sports halls and other buildings on protected land. Speculators purchase land where construction is not allowed for environmental or other reasons and bribe officials to change its status. The corruption also includes awarding public works contracts in exchange for kickbacks. The network sometimes extends to banks, police and the judiciary. The best-known case is the Costa del Sol tourist resort of Marbella, where dozens of politicians - including two former mayors - and businessmen were detained on charges of involvement in a corruption network worth billions of euros. But reports of graft in other places are also multiplying. In the most recent case, the mayor and five councillors were arrested in Telde on Gran Canaria Island on charges of generalized corruption. Several officials have resigned over similar allegations in other places. The judiciary is investigating mayors, councillors, officials and businessmen. Only drugs and arms trafficking and prostitution earn those involved more criminal money than the construction sector on the Costa del Sol, urban development expert Rafael Duarte said. Small businessmen linked to the sector have become millionaires almost overnight. "If I'm not paid, I won't sign papers for anyone," former Marbella deputy mayor Isabel Garcia Marcos said in a phone conversation that was taped without her knowledge. Local political parties may be established mainly to act as a cover for corruption, such as the Marbella party GIL, founded by the late mayor Jesus Gil y Gil, who is remembered as the father of big-time urban development corruption in Spain. Gil even created a local police force to hamper the work of national police investigating graft, local prosecutor Antonio Morales said. Spain's two main political parties are not innocent either, with politicians belonging both to the governing Socialist Party and the opposition conservative People's Party (PP) coming under suspicion. By the time the slow judiciary confirm a corruption case, the buildings in question are often finished and sold and it is too late to demolish them. The reasons for the graft are manifold, from lax legislation and a shortage of investigators to the presence in Spain of nearly 500 international organized crime rings, which launder money also through the real estate sector. The cost of corruption is enormous, from deteriorating public services and distorted urban planning to environmental problems on coasts covered by concrete. The government has announced measures, such as increasing its powers in urban planning at the expense of city councils and strengthening the authority of anti-corruption prosecutors.
© 2006 DPA

Another Spanish mayor held as scandal widens:
[from Reuters Nov. 27, 2006]
Kickbacks from builders alleged as construction soars; 70 arrested so far...
MADRID, Spain - Spanish police arrested another town mayor on suspicion of corruption Monday, a police source said, as the flood of scandals accusing public officials of taking kickbacks from builders showed little sign of slowing. Eugenio Hidalgo, the conservative mayor of Andratx on the tourist island of Mallorca was arrested on suspicion of money laundering and corruption along with one of the Balearic islands’ top planning officials, Jaume Massot. Nobody at the Mallorca court was immediately available to confirm the arrests, and a police spokesman said there was a court order preventing anybody from commenting on the case. Mariano Rajoy, leader of the conservative Popular Party, said any member of his party caught acting illegally would be thrown out immediately. Hidalgo is the third Spanish mayor and one of dozens of public officials arrested this year, accused of granting building permits or re-classifying land in exchange for bribes. The problem was first exposed in March when police uncovered a web of town hall corruption in the glitzy resort of Marbella, arrested the mayor, her deputy and dozens of others and confiscated property worth $3.2 billion. In response, the government has introduced legislation to curtail speculation and corruption in a country where building has boomed at an unprecedented rate in the past 10 years. Over that time, the total area classified as “urban” has grown by a quarter, and whole villages have been swallowed up by massive developments of apartment blocks, particularly near Madrid and on the Mediterranean coast. So far police have arrested about 70 politicians, civil servants and businessmen in the Marbella probe, which has captivated Spain with tales of councilors’ film-star lifestyles and bribe money arriving stuffed in rubbish bags. Another mayor was arrested for corruption in the Canary Islands, and police are investigating another south of Madrid after he was caught opening a 1 million euro bank account in Andorra. Thirty golden pens were stashed in his bank safety deposit box.
Copyright 2007 Reuters Limited.

Corruption scandal widens in Spain:
[from German Press Agency Published: Tuesday November 14, 2006]
Malaga, Spain- Spain's biggest ongoing corruption scandal widened Tuesday as police arrested at least nine people in connection with alleged bribery of officials in the Costa del Sol tourist resort of Marbella. Those detained included the ex-wife of a former mayor, a judicial official, a bank manager and businessmen, according to police sources. Dozens of people have been arrested in connection with corruption in Marbella, known for its celebrity holiday makers such as the late Saudi King Fahd. Local officials are believed to have granted illegal building permits in exchange for kickbacks worth billions of euros. The suspects include two former mayors, one of whom remains behind bars.
© 2006 DPA

"End of honesty" as corruption is widespred in Spain:
[from Deutsche Presse Agentur Published: Tuesday September 5, 2006]
By Sinikka Tarvainen,
Madrid- "Has the end of honesty finally come?", a Spanish newspaper columnist asked recently. In a country where the press is constantly reporting new corruption scandals, the question seems worth asking. The luxury tourist resort of Marbella on the southern Costa del Sol coast, where local politicians and their aides amassed fortunes by accepting bribes from construction companies, is believed to be only the tip of the iceberg. Last week, for instance, there were reports on various types of corruption investigations in Torrevieja, Orihuela, Almeria and Tarragona on the southern and eastern coast. Yet while political corruption shocks Spaniards, many of them find it absolutely normal to evade taxes or to take more than their due in social security payments. "This country has private, but no public morals," judge Angel Garcia Fontanet said, quoting a Catalan proverb: "To steal public goods is not to steal from anyone." Two former mayors, a former police chief, dozens of city councillors and businessmen were detained earlier this year in Marbella, where a third of the 80,000 houses or flats are thought to have been built with illegal permits. The suspected mastermind behind the scheme, municipal advisor Juan Antonio Roca, accepted some 30 million euros (38 million dollars) in bribes in two years, according to judicial sources. His fortune included a painting by the Spanish artist Joan Miro (1893-1983) in a bathroom, a tiger in the garden, a chapel with medieval sculptures and a helicopter pad. An estimated 1.5 million houses or flats - many of them hotels or holiday residences - are currently being built on the Spanish coast, largely for investment purposes rather than to relieve the housing shortage. Nobody knows how big a part of the decades-long construction boom is fuelled by corruption, but there is little doubt that the dozens of international criminal rings present in Spain launder large sums of money through real estate and other sectors. One indication is the huge amount of 500 euro bills circulating in Spain, which make up a third of all such bills in the European Union. Police investigating money laundering cases have seized property worth 4 billion euros in 12 months, 100 times as much as in 2000, the daily El Pais reported. In the most recent scandal involving politicians, two municipal councillors in Torrevieja are suspected of helping the local police to cover up torture of detained immigrants. Spain is more exposed to corruption than most other European countries because of the annual arrival of 50 million tourists, who include criminals and whose presence fuels the real estate boom. Other risk factors include drug trafficking from neigbouring Morocco and Latin America, an informal economy estimated at 20 per cent of the gross domestic product (GDP) and lack of coordination between police and other investigators. Corruption and related practices do not only involve politicians, powerful businessmen and big-time criminals, however. Few Spaniards have never met a plumber who asked to be paid under the counter, an employee who inflated his travel expenses or a burglary victim who exaggerated his losses when claiming insurance. More than 120,000 Spaniards could be living fraudulently on incapacity pensions, according to the daily El Mundo. The trick is to send your ailing relative or friend to undergo the medical exam in your name. "Cheating the state is a national sport," El Mundo observed, adding that there was a certain admiration for those who got away with it. "The big sin, the only sin, is to get caught," the daily La Vanguardia concurred. Many Spanish analysts attribute corruption and related practices to individualism and consumerism, but individualism is stronger in northern European countries, which international studies show to be less corrupt. Protestant northern Europeans attribute Spaniards' permissiveness to Catholicism, which allows believers to forget their sins after confession, but that is not the whole truth either. Some practices which are interpreted as corrupt are based on family values and solidarity rather than individualism. Nearly half of employed Spaniards, for instance, found their jobs with the help of family members or friends, as opposed to 24 per cent who were hired solely on merit, according to a recent study. Whatever the reasons of corruption, its cost is undoubtedly high, ranging from rising insurance premiums to the environmental devastation of the Mediterranean coast crammed with high-rise buildings. In Marbella, where corrupt officials have used city coffers for their private profit, hospitals are lacking for ambulances and under- equipped schools have high failure rates, reports said.
© 2006 DPA

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Sistemas políticos como el de la Argentina (y el de España) alientan la corrupción: Lo dice una destacada investigadora del tema, la profesora Susan Rose-Ackerman . Susan Rose-Ackerman estudió durante tres décadas la corrupción en todas sus variantes y formas: la institucional, la de poca monta, la política, la empresarial, la de los capitalistas y la de los comunistas, y la de los sistemas parlamentarios y presidencialistas. Y una de sus conclusiones es que el sistema de representación política que tiene la Argentina favorece la corrupción. “De acuerdo con los estudios estadísticos, la peor combinación, la que más alienta la corrupción, es la de un sistema político basado en un presidente con amplios poderes y legisladores elegidos por un sistema de representación proporcional”, dice Rose-Ackerman. Profesora y codirectora del Centro de Derecho, Economía y Políticas Públicas de la Universidad de Yale, ex consultora del Banco Mundial y autora de decenas de artículos y de dos celebrados libros: - Corrupción, un estudio de economía política , de 1978, y el traducido a trece idiomas, incluido el chino, Corrupción y gobierno: causas, consecuencias y reforma , de 1999-, Rose-Ackerman es una de las mayores y más respetadas investigadoras del fenómeno de la corrupción en el mundo. Ella carga contra varios supuestos en materia de corrupción. "Hay que tener cuidado al escuchar lo que dicen los ciudadanos, porque ellos señalan sólo aquello con lo que chocan", explica. La gente puede hablar de lo que vive, del policía que le pide unos pesos de coima. "Pero está también la corrupción en los niveles altos, como en las privatizaciones y en las concesiones, a los que no llega la mayoría de los ciudadanos", dice... lea la entrevista en diario La Nación

Para profundizar en los principales acontecimientos que afectan a nuestro planeta, recomendamos ver, escuchar o leer el informativo diario de DemocraciaYa!