Andalucia: Corruption capital of the world…or Europe at least..

Down here, in darkest Southern Europe, we pride ourselves on being able to out-do Mugabe and his fellow African dictators (amongst other world-wide pariahs) in the corruption stakes. Andalucia seems to be adept at the process.

Still bubbling along nicely is the scandal where public money was given to struggling companies in Andalucia to help them downsize in the economic downturn and to cover the costs of the high redundancy payments that Spanish law demanded. So what if some of the “employees” never actually worked for the companies.  A minor detail after all. So what if a few party apparatchicks and hangers-on also  benefited. It’s only the socialists getting their own back after years of right-wing dictatorship innit?

This affair has, on the way, claimed the scalps of a couple of Junta de Andalucia presidents who have left their jobs early to “spend more time with their families” (my interpretation) as well as a few department heads in the administration in Seville. However, so inured has the population become, that corruption just generates another series of yawns.

Well they’re yawning again already as it seems another chunk of public money has been mis-appropriated. It would seem that in Malaga province, a shed load of cash has been handed out to run courses to help the unemployed (and there’s lots of them about – some 36% of the population according to the EU), but it would seem that some course were never actually held and on others, some of the alleged attendees never actually attended. Well, well, well. Would you adam and eve it! We’re talking about 1.5 Million Euros out of a total award for this work of 5.6 million. I bet the naughty ones thought it was small enough to brush under the carpet!

 

The Andalucia Education commissioner – one Luciano Alonso – is bristling with righteous indignation:

“This is abuse against Andalusia, it is shameful, it is a general accusation against Andalusia,” he said.