MADRID: Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez will on Thursday attempt to offer explanations to hostile lawmakers investigating a corruption scandal that has threatened to topple his minority left-wing government.
Corruption probes targeting former Socialist heavyweights and Sanchez’s wife have embarrassed a leader who took office in 2018 pledging to clean up Spanish politics after the conservative opposition was convicted in its own graft scandal.
The hours-long hearing before a Senate committee will grill Sanchez over a complicated affair involving alleged kickbacks in exchange for public contracts for sanitary equipment during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The scandal has ensnared ex-transport minister Jose Luis Abalos and former senior Socialist official Santos Cerdan, both former close allies of Sanchez who helped him rise to power.
Abalos’s former adviser Koldo Garcia is another key suspect in the case that has seen Cerdan jailed and police enter Socialist headquarters in Madrid, in damaging images for Sanchez.
The opposition conservative Popular Party (PP), which commands a majority in the Senate, aims to prove that Sanchez knew about or participated in the murky maneuvers.
The summoning of Sanchez is part of its relentless focus on alleged Socialist corruption in a bid to force early elections that would return it to power.
“You will lie again tomorrow in the Senate because you know that if you tell the truth, it will be the end of you,” PP leader Alberto Nunez Feijoo told Sanchez in parliament on Wednesday.
The prime minister has repeatedly apologized for the scandal but denied knowledge of the alleged wrongdoing or that the Socialists benefited from illegal funding.
A damning police report in the summer that implicated Cerdan in the scandal briefly threatened to rip apart the Socialist-led coalition with the far-left Sumar party.
But Sanchez has rebuffed opposition calls to resign and call early elections, although he has acknowledged he once considered quitting as the pressure grew.
In July, he unveiled a package of anti-corruption measures in a bid to repair ties with Sumar and an array of fringe and regional separatist parties without which the government cannot pass legislation.
Separate corruption investigations have targeted Sanchez’s wife Begona Gomez and his younger brother David Sanchez, dogging his government for more than a year.
In another affair embarrassing the government, the Socialist-appointed top prosecutor will go on trial next week accused of leaking legal secrets against the partner of the Madrid region’s influential PP leader.
Spanish PM faces grilling by lawmakers over graft scandal
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Spanish PM faces grilling by lawmakers over graft scandal
- Corruption probes targeting former Socialist heavyweights and Sanchez’s wife have embarrassed a leader who took office in 2018 pledging to clean up Spanish politics after the conservative opposition was convicted in its own graft scandal
Greek coast guard search for 15 after migrant boat found adrift
- The two survivors reported that the vessel had become unstable due to bad weather and there was no means of getting shelter, food or water
ATHENS: Greek coast guard were on Monday searching for 15 people who fell into the water from a migrant boat that was found drifting off the coast of Crete with 17 bodies on board.
The 17 fatalities, all of them men, were discovered on Saturday on the craft, which was taking on water and partially deflated, some 26 nautical miles (48 kilometers) southwest of the island.
Post-mortem examinations were being carried out to determine how they died but Greek public television channel ERT suggested they may have suffered from hypothermia or dehydration.
A Greek coast guard spokeswoman told AFP that two survivors reported that “15 people fell in the water” after the motor cut out on Thursday, then the vessel drifted for two days.
At the time, Crete and much of the rest of Greece was battered by heavy rain and storms.
The two survivors reported that the vessel had become unstable due to bad weather and there was no means of getting shelter, food or water.
The vessel had 34 people on board and had left the Libyan port of Tobruk on Wednesday, the Greek port authorities said. Most of those who died came from Sudan and Egypt.
It was initially spotted by a Turkish-flagged cargo ship on Saturday, triggering a search that included ships and aircraft from the Greek coast guard and the European Union border agency Frontex.
Migrants have been trying to reach Crete from Libya for the last year, as a way of entering the European Union. But the Mediterranean crossing is perilous.
In Brussels, the EU’s 27 members on Monday backed a significant tightening of immigration policy, including the concept of returning failed asylum-seekers to “return hubs” outside the bloc.
The UN refugee agency said more than 16,770 asylum seekers in the EU have arrived on Crete since the start of the year — more than any other island in the Aegean Sea.
Greece’s conservative government has also toughened its migration policy, suspending asylum claims for three months, particularly those coming to Crete from Libya.
