Spain’s biggest ever corruption trial opened on Monday morning in the town of Malaga as 95 people accused of involvement in a network of graft in nearby glitzy southern resort town of Marbella began to appear court.
Two former mayors, 15 town councilors and numerous lawyers and businessmen are accused of running the town on a cash-for-votes system operated at town hall meetings. Between them they allegedly took 670 million euros (US$899.8 million) in bribes and from municipal funds over three years.
The alleged Mr Big who ran Marbella from his private offices for more than a decade, Juan Antonio Roca, faces fines totaling about 800 million euros and 35 years in prison sentences.
Former mayors Julian Munoz and Marisol Yague are among those said to have been on Roca’s payroll, which extended across parties and covered more than half of the town’s councilors.
These were allegedly paid for each vote at which they approved planning permits or contracts to run municipal services such as the coach station or the town’s breakdown trucks. As a result, planning laws were widely flouted while the once-charming Mediterranean beach resort was carpeted with concrete.
“I don’t sign a piece of paper, or even read one if I don’t get money,” Marbella Deputy Mayor Isabel Garcia Marcos was caught saying on one phone-tap.
Police found 378,000 euros in 500 euro notes at her home.
“Roca is a man with total control over the town hall — the councilors are subordinate to him. He is the person who all developers go to in order to see their wishes satisfied,” magistrate Miguel Angel Torres said during the preparatory investigation.
The man who many people blame for rampant corruption in Marbella, former mayor Jesus Gil, is not in the dock. He died six years ago. Roca is currently serving a six-year sentence for a corruption case dating back to Gil’s time.
The Spanish government dissolved the Marbella town council in April 2006 in the wake of the scandal and appointed an auditors’ commission to run the town until local elections were held in 2007.
The trial is expected to last a year.
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