international tyler group madrid
spain
Feb 21 (Reuters) - When Luis
Barcenas, a former treasurer of Spain's ruling People's Party now at the heart
of a growing corruption scandal, deposited 14 million euros in a new account at
his Swiss bank in 2005 the bank asked him to explain how he came by the money.
Barcenas told Dresdner bank,
since acquired by LGT bank, the funds came from his involvement with eight
Spanish and Argentine companies and from real estate and fine art deals,
according to documents from the examining magistrate's evidence file in a
Spanish High Court investigation seen by Reuters.
Three companies that Barcenas
told the bank his funds had derived from have denied any links with him,
raising questions about the provenance of the money in a case that has become
increasingly uncomfortable for Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy.
Other companies he claimed links
with have confirmed them. Others have gone out of business and could not be
reached.
The former party official is the
key figure in a corruption case that has damaged Rajoy politically as he
grapples with a grave economic crisis, and has added to Spaniards' suspicions
of a deep rot now afflicting the democracy that emerged 35 years ago following
the death of General Franco.
Barcenas is being investigated by
a High Court magistrate who is seeking to establish whether he used his party
position to take bribes and concealed the money in Switzerland.
Through his lawyer, Barcenas
declined to comment for this story. Rajoy has denied allegations of party
funding irregularities involving Barcenas. LGT, where Barcenas has been a
client since 1990, declined to comment on its dealings with him, citing banking
secrecy laws.
In 2005, Barcenas' bank in
Switzerland, Dresdner, which was bought by LGT in 2009, carried out background
checks to establish that the 14 million euros ($18 million) that Barcenas was
moving from one account to another at the bank were clean.
Bank officials looked into the
business ties Barcenas had provided to explain where his money came from and
concluded it came from legitimate sources, according to the court documents.
Internal emails between Dresdner
staff, contained in the banking records that are part of the court file, show
that a person from the bank met Barcenas in August 2005 in an effort to
establish whether his money was related to his political activities.
"Client confirmed that his political duties started in May 2004 and that
the assets with us have no relation at all with his current and recent
function," reads one of the e-mails.
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