Spanish – Celia Cánovas, a lawyer, was a member of the Podemos party between 2015 and 2019. She has denounced the party led by vice president Pablo Iglesias for the crime of money laundering.
According to Libertad Digital, Cánovas asked the Justice Department in Madrid to consider her as the “aggrieved party” in the accusation against Podemos for “illegal financing and electoral crimes.”
According to Cánovas, “she made two transfers in January 2018 for a total amount of 3,000 euros.” However, in 2019, the treasurer of Podemos said that the former senator had contributed about 5,000 euros. “There is a difference of 2,000 euros between what she donated to the party and what is in the referred certification,” the complaint states.
According to sources, this would not be the first case of a gap in the amounts that could implicate Podemos in money laundering, Libertad Digital reported.
More scandals muddying Pablo Iglesias’ party
Podemos is under investigation for having received illegal money from Chavismo, Iran, and Evo Morales and for overpayments and errors in their accounts. Meanwhile, Iglesias, general-secretary of the purple party, is also under investigation for an alleged “montage,” better known as The Dina Case. This case appeared after his then advisor reported the theft of his cell phone in 2015. Over the years, it was discovered that the alleged theft had been a hoax.
The daily El Español explains the case well: “Dina Bousselham, former advisor to Pablo Iglesias, denounced the theft of her cell phone in November 2015. In July 2016, OKdiario published screenshots of the memory card from Dina’s phone, and she extended the complaint but did not reveal that her political boss, Pablo Iglesias, had had the card in his possession since January 2016 when it was given to him by the president of Grupo Zeta, Antonio Asensio.”
Why would Iglesias have in his possession information from Bousselham’s phone after the cell phone was reportedly stolen? Now a judge in Spain is investigating whether Dina, Iglesias, and Podemos sought to “instrumentalize” the judicial process for their political benefit.
Diversion of funds?
The Spanish justice system is also investigating whether Podemos received illegal money from Evo Morales after it was revealed that the company Neurona Consulting received 1.3 million euros for 169 small videos it made for the Bolivian government.
Neurona Consulting is the communication agency that Podemos hired for the 2019 municipal elections and has been investigated for corruption. Recently, the Spanish Court of Auditors found great irregularities linked to this company.
According to the investigations, Neurona Consulting received this money in December 2018, and three months later, it arrived in Spain to work in the campaigns of the Spanish vice president’s party. The company, which specializes in audiovisuals and publicity, is linked to Juan Carlos Monedero, co-founder of Podemos.
Senseless accounts
The Spanish Court of Auditors also found major irregularities in the finances of the Iglesias party, specifically in the invoices used in the framework of the last general elections. This court is the body that audits the accounts and economic management of the state. It is also responsible for monitoring the accounts of Spain’s political parties.
A report in the newspaper El Mundo revealed that Podemos’ accounts show unjustified invoices, irregular expenses, even payments prohibited by the electoral accounting law. The total irregular expenses detected amounts to 425,037.41 euros (500,546 USD approximately).
Money laundering
According to El Mundo, 360 Global Media, a production company linked to Podemos, received at least 9.3 million euros from companies receiving money directly from Iran. The reports of the Executive Service of the Money Laundering and Monetary Infractions Commission show that the 16 companies under suspicion made 67 deposits in the accounts of the producer in Spain from 2012 to 2015.
But the production company not only benefited from illegal transactions, investigations indicate that at least 23 bank transfers were made from 360 Global Media’s bank accounts to the accounts of the current vice president of Spain, Pablo Iglesias, for a total of 93,000 euros.
The former legal head of Podemos, José Manuel Calvente, presented evidence against the far-left party to the Civil Guard. Consequently, the evidence was handed over to the Court of Instruction number 42 in Madrid, by Juan José Escalonilla, who summoned Calvente to testify as a witness and to ratify his complaint.
Calavante reported the payment of “bonuses” of “about 900 euros a month (600 in payroll and the rest in black) from the treasurer and the manager of the party.” He also claimed that payments were made “without an approved budget” and that the transparency portal had been blocked.
Calvente’s complaint comes as no surprise since, in May 2020, it was revealed that the Chavista regime and Iran used the television channel HispanTV to inject funds into Podemos.
More illicit financing
Ok Diario published an investigation that reveals that the Venezuelan government paid Pablo Iglesias 272,325 USD with state money.
According to the Spanish publication, Iglesias received this amount in dollars in his bank account in the tax haven of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines (Caribbean islands), under the guise of payment for alleged “social development consultancy” in Venezuela. The payment was made two months after the foundation of the Podemos party in Spain.
In 2016, Rafael Isea, the former finance minister of Venezuela, told Spain’s Economic and Fiscal Crime Unit (UDEF) that former president Hugo Chávez paid seven million euros (7.6 million USD) to the Podemos Foundation.
Isea, who was a minister in the government of Hugo Chávez, ratified before UDEF agents the veracity of a document in which the former president approved allocating this money to create supposed “political forces and social movements” in the European country to bring about “political changes in Spain that are akin to the Bolivarian government.”