Twenty of the 25 defendants in the main piece of the Gürtel case have informed the National Court that they recognize the crimes of tax fraud and laundering of money obtained by the corruption plot related to the PP, among them the two ringleaders, Francisco Correa and Pablo Crespo.
This Monday the National Court began the last trial of the Gürtel casea macro case that was divided into a total of 13, in which tax crimes and money laundering achieved by the corrupt network through bribes to PP officials in city councils and autonomous communities are prosecuted to obtain contract awards between 1998 and 2009.
The twenty defendants who acknowledge facts seek to reduce the sentence that may be imposed on them and specifically Correa and Crespo face a provisional request from the prosecutor for 77 years in prison, the highest.
Civil liability
Correa, who is in third degree or semi-freedom after serving 10 years in prison, once allowed the unblocking of his accounts in Switzerland to repatriate 20.7 million euros intended to repair the damage caused and civil liability.
For his part, in his letter of acknowledgment of the facts, Pablo Crespo reiterates, as he has already done in other trials in the plot, that he deducted as expenses what “really were gifts or prodigalities in favor of certain authorities or officials or the Popular Party.”
The pacts with the Prosecutor’s Office have been precisely the tone in the latest trials for this plot, for which the PP was convicted as a lucrative participant for the benefits it obtained in Madrid municipalities.