CASI, the massive farmers cooperative, has announced legal actions against their (now ex-) president José María Andújar after they discovered he’d been dipping into the till.
The scandal started earlier this year when a number of cooperative members voiced suspicion about the multi million accounts of the cooperative. He retaliated by launching disciplinary measures against any member who dared voice complaint.
There are also complaints about his “criminal mishandling” of fruit and veg that goes through the cooperative, with one complaint alleging that CASI had to bin half a million kilos of tomatos in a week after they “lost” the paperwork, forgot to ship them to market and let them all spoil by leaving them outside under the sun.
One thing lead to another, several farmers filed criminal complaints to the Police about him, he eventually quit / was pushed out, yadda yadda yadda.
The first thing the new president did was order a new independent audit of the accounts of the cooperative, and in a closed meeting last night several hundred members were delivered the results.
La Voz doesn’t give figures, but the results were enough for an almost unanimous vote for criminal complaints to be filed with the Police on behalf of the association, so he’s obviously been wheeling the stuff out in wheelbarrows for yonks now.
I tell you, it’s a sad but true fact: give anyone in this country a whiff of power and access to the bank accounts, and they’ll empty them, safe in the knowledge that the justice system is setup to keep the peasants quiet.