The 'Aznar generation' is summoned to the bench

The scene of a minister from José María Aznar walking towards the dock is going to become very common in the coming weeks. The Spanish courts are planning to hold three trials against three key members of the governments of the former leader of the PP, who occupied La Moncloa from 1996 to 2004. Two former vice presidents (Rodrigo Rato and Francisco Álvarez-Cascos) and a former spokesperson for the Executive (Eduardo Zaplana) are facing trial. They face accusations of corruption from the Prosecutor's Office: fortunes hidden from the Treasury, accounts in Switzerland, diverted funds…

The coincidence of these oral hearings questions a political era that the PP tried to elevate, and a generation that reached its heights of maximum power at the hands of Aznar. The trial against Rato already began in Madrid on December 15; Zaplana's was going to start this Thursday in Valencia, but it has been delayed until March; and Álvarez-Cascos' project plans to begin in Asturias in just over four weeks. They all defend his innocence.

José María Aznar's PP has been deeply marked by corruption. Three of his former ministers have already slept behind bars. Rato himself, firmly sentenced to four and a half years in prison by the black card case from Caja Madrid; and Jaume Matas, former head of the Environment portfolio from 2000 to 2003 and former president of the Balearic Islands, who has accumulated sentences of more than eight years in prison for various summaries, such as Nóos case or the Son Espases case. Eduardo Zaplana, arrested in May 2018, was also preventively imprisoned until February 2019 for the wasteland casewhen the judge released him after alleging that his confinement put his life at risk, since his health had deteriorated due to the leukemia he suffers from, diagnosed in 2015.

The conservative party has also accumulated three convictions as a legal entity for benefiting from Gürtel, the corruption network led by Francisco Correa that nested in the party since the 1990s. In one of the rulings on the plot headed by the businessman – who attended the wedding of the daughter of the then President of the Government as a guest – the National Court describes how “he wove a structure of stable collaboration” with different people from the political force. . In turn, a large part of the leadership of the Aznar era, including himself, had to testify as a witness in the trial on the PP's box b, which ended with the conviction of the former treasurer Luis Bárcenas, author of the famous parallel accounting of the popular ones baptized as The Bárcenas papers —where alleged bonuses to senior officials were collected.

Two other former Aznar ministers were accused in major corruption cases. On the one hand, Esperanza Aguirre, responsible for Culture from 1996 to 1999 and later president of Madrid, was charged in the line of investigation of the Punic case about the irregular financing of the Madrid popular party, although the case was filed against her due to lack of evidence in 2022 – despite the fact that she was the main beneficiary since her general secretary, Francisco Granados, and her manager, Beltrán, have been sent to the bench Gutierrez. On the other hand, Ángel Acebes, a member of the Government from 1999 to 2004, was acquitted in the Bankia casewhere he shared the bench with Rato.

Mariano Rajoy and Cristóbal Montoro, who also held important portfolios with Aznar, are being investigated in a summary opened in Andorra for the so-called Operation Catalonia, the alleged maneuvers of police groups concocted in the Ministry of the Interior of Jorge Fernández Díaz to discredit the independence movement. during the Rajoy Government.

Rato's fortune. Since last December, the Provincial Court of Madrid has hosted the oral hearing against Rato, vice president from 1996 to 2004, on the alleged illicit origin of his fortune. The Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office, which has requested nearly 70 years in prison for the former politician and former managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), maintains that he concocted a complex corporate plot to hide his assets from the Treasury since 1999 (when he was part of the Government of José María Aznar). The trial has already gone through 13 sessions and, according to the planned calendar, it will last until May.

Zaplana's alleged commissions. Starting this Thursday, the Valencia Court was due to host the trial against the former Minister of Labor and former spokesperson for the Aznar Government, who established himself as a representative of the hardest wing of the PP during his opposition to the first socialist Executive of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero (when he encouraged the conspiracy theory about the jihadist attacks of 11-M). However, the court has agreed to suspend the oral hearing this Thursday (with Zaplana already appearing in the City of Justice), and has postponed it until March 21 because the former popular leader's lawyer has had to be operated on after suffering a heart attack.

The public ministry is asking for 19 years in prison for Zaplana for leading an alleged scheme that collected commissions in exchange for the awarding of public contracts. In this summary called wasteland case, Anticorruption maintains that the corrupt network began to operate during the popular period as president of the Generalitat Valenciana (1995-2002), who hid the money abroad – he moved through countries such as Panama, Andorra and Luxembourg – and later tried to repatriate it, after passing through the central government (2002-2004), through a complex corporate structure. The court estimates that the oral hearing will last about five months. José Luis Olivas,
vice president of Bankia and former president of the Generalitat Valenciana, also accompanies him on the bench.

Helmet expenses. The Court of Asturias has set March 4 as the start date of the trial against Álvarez-Cascos, which is expected to last until the 8th. The Prosecutor's Office, which is asking for three and a half years in prison, attributes to him the appropriation of funds from Foro Asturias, the party he promoted in 2011 after leaving the popular ranks after 34 years of militancy. The accusation maintains that he charged the training expenses for furniture, clothing, video games and travel, among others. In total, he allegedly “added to his assets” 181,648 euros. Although suspicions about Cascos have also loomed over his time as Minister of Public Works with Aznar. The public ministry has investigated the sale of works of art by a company, linked to his ex-wife, to large construction companies that received million-dollar awards from Development; but it was considered that these transactions would have expired when they were executed between 2004 and 2006. The Development concessions during the Cascos era were already under scrutiny in the case of the Bárcenas papersgiven the indications that contracts were rigged to grant them to party donors who made contributions of black money to box b—investigations that did not prosper due to lack of evidence.

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