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Spanish newspaper El Mundo has published what it alleges are documents showing PM Mariano Rajoy and other top politicians received illicit payments.
El Mundo said it had original ledger entries handwritten by the former treasurer of the governing Popular Party (PP), Luis Barcenas.
It said it had delivered the documents to the High Court.
Mariano Rajoy and other PP members have repeatedly denied that they received illegal payments.
Another Spanish paper, El Pais, published similar documents earlier this year.
It is claimed that Luis Barcenas ran a PP slush fund that took donations from construction magnates and distributed them to party leaders in cash.
Luis Barcenas is in custody facing trial for corruption and tax fraud. He denies the allegations.
El Mundo has published what it alleges are documents showing PM Mariano Rajoy and other top politicians received illicit payments
However, in an interview published in El Mundo on Sunday, Luis Barcenas for the first time admitted that the handwriting in the ledger was his.
Luis Barcenas added that the photocopies originally published by El Pais were a fraction of the documents he had in his possession.
El Mundo said the documents it had seen showed that Mariano Rajoy received payments in 1997, 1998 and 1999 when he was a minister in the government of Jose Maria Aznar.
They included, it said, two payments to Mariano Rajoy of 2.1 million pesetas (12,600 euros; $16,000) in 1998.
The alleged payments are said to have been undeclared and untaxed.
Spanish opposition leader Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba in February called on Mariano Rajoy to resign over the allegations.
“The Luis Barcenas originals published by El Mundo today pulverize the alibi used until now by the PP to deny the authenticity of its ex-treasurer’s papers,” the newspaper wrote.
The PP responded with a statement saying: “The Popular Party reiterates that it does not know of the notes nor their content, and it does not in any way recognize them as the accounts of this political organization.”
The allegations have caused anger among Spaniards already suffering a deep and long recession and biting austerity cuts.
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Janez Jansa, the two-time prime minister of Slovenia, has been convicted of corruption and sentenced to two years in prison.
Janez Jansa was accused of soliciting bribes as part of a defense deal. He said the charges were politically motivated and that he would appeal.
The former prime minister was forced to quit the office in March amid protests over corruption and recession.
Slovenia, often seen as the most successful of the former Yugoslav states, faces severe economic problems.
There has been repeated speculation that it may become the latest eurozone member to have to ask for a bailout.
The District Court in Ljubljana ruled on Wednesday that Janez Jansa and two others had sought about 2 million euros in commission from a Finnish firm, Patria, in order to help it win a military supply contract in 2006.
Under the 278 million-euro deal, Patria was to supply Slovenia with 135 armored personnel carriers. The deal was scrapped after the corruption allegations surfaced.
Janez Jansa, the two-time prime minister of Slovenia, has been convicted of corruption and sentenced to two years in prison
The two other defendants were each sentenced to 22 months in prison. All three were also fined 37,000 euros each.
Prosecutions in connection with the case are also taking place in Finland.
Before the verdict was announced on Wednesday, Janez Jansa called the charges a farce and said that if he was found guilty, he would appeal against what he called a “political process”.
Janez Jansa was a prominent figure in Slovenia’s secession from Yugoslavia in 1991.
He was prime minister from November 2004 to November 2008, and again from February 2012 until March 2013, when his centre-right government lost a confidence motion in parliament after smaller parties left the coalition led by his Slovenian Democratic Party.
As well as facing allegations about corruption and tax irregularities, Janez Jansa’s government had been struggling to impose an austerity agenda amid one of the deepest recessions in the eurozone.
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Iraq has decided to cancel a $4.2 billion deal to buy arms from Russia because of concerns about “corruption”, an Iraqi government advisor has said.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki has launched an investigation into the deal, said his spokesman.
The purchase – said to include attack helicopters and missiles – was only signed off in October.
Iraq has been rebuilding its armed forces since the end of US-led combat operations against insurgents.
Announcing the cancellation of the purchase on Saturday, a spokesman for Prime Minister Nouri Maliki told AFP news agency that “when Maliki returned from his trip to Russia, he had some suspicions of corruption, so he decided to review the whole deal”.
“There is an investigation going on, on this,” he added.
The sale would have made Moscow – the main supplier of arms to Iraq under Saddam Hussein – the country’s second-biggest arms supplier after the US.
There has been no word from Russia about the cancellations.
In early October, Nouri Maliki said in a speech that he did not want Iraq to be “part of someone else’s (arms) monopoly.”
But he faced criticism from political opponents who questioned buying from Russia, when multiple deals with the US had been signed.
One Iraqi MP suggested that counterterrorism operations – the stated aim of the purchase – required improved intelligence, and not the 30 Mi-28 attack helicopters that were reported to be part of the deal.
The contracts were announced to some fanfare on 9 October after talks between the two countries’ prime ministers near Moscow.
At the time the deal was agreed, analysts suggested that while it was clear Iraq wanted to diversify its weapons purchases, buying from Russia would only encourage the sense in Washington that the US is somehow “losing Iraq”.
Nouri Maliki – who said he was seeking “quick contracts to fight terrorism” – warned even before he left that anything he signed might be scuttled by parliament.
Indian police have stopped prominent anti-corruption campaigner Baba Ramdev from marching to parliament to stage a protest in Delhi.
Baba Ramdev and his supporters have been detained for allegedly “violating prohibitory laws”.
Known as the yoga guru, Baba Ramdev says he is campaigning for the recovery of bribe money allegedly held overseas.
He is also demanding stronger anti-corruption laws. He has millions of supporters across India.
Baba Ramdev’s daily TV programme is watched by people across the country.
Indian police have stopped prominent anti-corruption campaigner Baba Ramdev from marching to parliament to stage a protest in Delhi
Last June he held a nine-day anti-corruption hunger strike before the police evicted him from Delhi.
His latest protest – attended by several thousand people – was held at the Ramlila ground in Delhi, the venue of his protest last year.
Baba Ramdev told his supporters on Monday that they should march to parliament and hold a “peaceful” protest there.
“Throw out the Congress [the governing party] and save the country,” he said, before beginning his march.
But police stopped him and his supporters near a flyover in the city and detained them.
On Sunday, Baba Ramdev said he would “intensify the protest across the country in the form of a people’s revolt”.
He asked his supporters to be ready to court arrest, but urged them to be peaceful.
In June, the yoga guru joined leading campaigner Anna Hazare to undertake a day-long fast in protest against corruption.
The former French President Jacques Chirac has been given by a court a two-year suspended prison sentence for diverting public funds and abusing public trust.
Jacques Chirac, 79, was not in court to hear the verdict because of ill-health but denied wrongdoing.
President from 1995 to 2007, he was put on trial on charges that dated back to his time as mayor of Paris.
Jacques Chirac was accused of paying members of his Rally for the Republic (RPR) party for municipal jobs that did not exist.
The former French President Jacques Chirac has been given by a court a two-year suspended prison sentence for diverting public funds and abusing public trust
The prosecution had urged the judge to acquit Jacques Chirac and nine others accused in the trial. Two of the nine were cleared. The other seven were found guilty and all but one handed suspended prison sentences.
Jean de Gaulle, grandson of former President Charles de Gaulle, was handed a three-month suspended term while former union leader Marc Blondel, 73, was convicted but escaped a sentence.
In 2004, during his presidency, several figures including France’s current Foreign Minister Alain Juppe were convicted in connection with the case.
Alain Juppe was given a 14-month suspended sentence.
Jacques Chirac, mayor of Paris from 1977 to 1995, is the first former French head of state to be convicted since Marshal Philippe Petain, the leader of the wartime Vichy regime, was found guilty in 1945 of collaborating with the Nazis.
The verdict would come as a surprise to the French public because the prosecution said it had not been proven that Jacques Chirac had known of individual cases of fake jobs.
The case was divided into two parts: the first count involved embezzlement and breach of trust in relation to 21 bogus jobs; the second related to a charge of illegal conflict of interest concerning seven jobs.
Jacques Chirac was found guilty of both.
The former president, who had legal immunity during his time as head of state, faced a potential 10 years in prison and a fine of 150,000 euros for the employment of more than 20 bogus officials.
“Jacques Chirac has breached the duty of probity required for public officials, to the detriment of the public interest of Parisians,” said tribunal judge, Dominique Pauthe.
Although Jacques Chirac himself was not in court, his adopted daughter Anh Dao Traxel was present to hear the verdict which she described as “too, too severe for him” and a great source of pain.
“As a family, we should all absolutely support him… for his health for the rest of his life,” Anh Dao Traxel said in an emotional statement outside the court.
The former president’s doctors say Jacques Chirac has irreversible neurological problems which cause memory lapses. His legal team will now consider whether to appeal against the conviction.
“For those expecting the case to be thrown out or at least no penalty, the ruling may appear disappointing,” said one of Jacques Chirac’s lawyers, Georges Kiejman.
“I hope this judgement won’t change at all the profound affection that the French people still have towards Jacques Chirac.”
There was little sympathy from some quarters.
“I call on Mr. Chirac to accept the consequences of his conviction and indeed resign from the Constitutional Council,” said Green presidential candidate Eva Joly, referring to his role in France’s highest authority for constitutional issues.
His rival for the presidency in 2002, former National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, described the verdict as “a ray of sunshine in the black sky of scandals”.
For Michel Roussin, former director of Jacques Chirac’s cabinet who was found not guilty by the court of abuse of trust, the ex-president had “assumed his political responsibility”.
After 17 years of “incessant battles”, he said he was relieved the case was over.
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