No, not me – Seville businessman José Antonio González, currently turned witness for the prosecution in exchange for leniency in the ERE slush fund case rocking Andalusian politics.
José has submitted evidence to Judge Alaya, in charge of rooting out the truth in this billion euro corruption case, showing that over the years he paid around €700,000 in bribes to politicians of all colours in exchange for lucrative business deals around Seville.
Including €70,000 in cash to a unnamed “but very senior” Izquierda Unida politician who is rumoured to currently hold a high post in the coalition government ruling Andalucia. It’s the first time the Communists have been directly implicated in this corruption scandal.
The cash was handed over before the last elections in 2011, when the PSOE and IU were running Seville. In exchange for the bribe, the IU politician signed off on contracts worth hundreds of thousands of euros to his company, which, naturally, were inflated vastly out of proportion to their cost.
His father, Rafael González Palomo, founder of the company, has already admitted giving a further €30,000 in cash to a PSOE politician in the same coalition.
Between 2003 and 2011, José reckons he paid out over €700,000 in bribes, mainly around Seville. A lot of them were for gardening contracts for the parks of Seville, and the old Head of Parks in the city is currently in jail pending trial for these contracts.
His company, Fitonova, received over the period several large contracts including one worth over 8 million euros to do up some football fields,
A full list of the scandal is available here. 9 people are currently on trial due to the evidence submitted by José.