Corruption's Price: A Spanish Deceit (46 page)

He offered to Señora Cárdenas a listing of all payments discovered by Emilia with the M-In Accounts, although not described as such, on one page with extracts from the ServiArquitectos accounts on the facing page. Having explained the significance and source of the second page he sought confirmation of the first page's accuracy.

To his surprise, Señora Cárdenas was open and helpful. If the items in page two had come from the access granted to the ServiArquitectos accounting systems obtained by the
Señoría
and these corresponded with the items on the first page, and on first sight it seemed they did, she could therefore accept their correctness.

Juez Garibey was suspicious. This was too easy. He moved on.

"Could Señora Cárdenas explain why there were so many double payments for the same invoice and failures to seek refunds of credit notes?"

She was more guarded this time and said, "About the credit notes I can tell you. On the advice of our internal counsel here, Señorita Carbajal, some years ago ServiArquitectos took a policy decision only to seek repayment of credit notes if a supplier was repeatedly taking advantage."

"Was that not a rather strange policy, Señora? Your company was allowing its suppliers keep money they owed ServiArquitectos?"

"It depends on who you ask,
Señoría
. As I recall it, Adoración, Señorita Carbajal, suggested it because she heard this was common practice in other businesses. We trust our suppliers to return what is not theirs."

Juez
Garibey reflected on this before saying, "It was also a remarkably simple way to provide excess payments to suppliers whilst still appearing to observe good accounting practices."

"Only if you say so,
Señoría
."

"What about double paying invoices?"

"That was never material. It happens all the time in large companies. We all know it. We try to stamp it out but we never manage it. There are many reasons why it occurs. The most common is human error. The second most common is urgency. The third is these two combined."

"I don't understand, Señora Cárdenas. Error and urgency?"

"It's simple,
Señoría
." She spoke with an exaggerated patience clearly conveying she thought
Juez
Garibey slow-minded.

"A supplier fulfils an order and sends us the ordered products and, separately, the invoice. The invoice takes time to go through our strict quality acceptance and approval procedures. This the supplier cannot control. Meanwhile, we unintentionally exceed the, say, thirty or sixty days we have to pay the supplier. The supplier calls to complain. The slow approval process is our fault. We issue an urgent manual payment authorisation, but only because the supplier is well known to us. Occasionally, when the approval process finally completes, the originally intended automated cheque also goes out, in effect a second payment. If the supplier does not inform us we have to notice what has happened. I can tell you,
Señoría
, the amounts involved are tiny, perhaps a quarter of 1 per cent, most probably less, of our total purchases."

"You make it sound so convincing, Señora. Just common errors not followed up. By the way, how much is a quarter of 1 per cent of your annual purchases?"

"Today our purchases are about nine billion euros a year, but most of that is payments for people that are handled differently. Say about two billion."

"If I calculate correctly, that quarter of a per cent of two billion is around five million euros."

"I suppose so. As you said earlier, 'tiny, peanuts'."

"No,
you
said it, not me. Add to this the credit notes and there might be many million euros per year incorrectly leaking out, just from these two 'errors'."

"In the context of our more than ten billion of sales that's immaterial,
Señoría
."

"Perhaps. But even five million euros a year adds up to a decent little slush fund."

Garibey was interrupted by Señorita Carbajal. Standing, red along the long length of her neck and across her face, these were minor details
Juez
Garibey absorbed in passing.

"You cannot make insinuations like that. You have no evidence."

She was about to continue but was tugged back to her seat.

Juez
Garibey waited before responding: "But I believe I have."

He proceeded to lay out his second line of questioning, bringing into play where the first page of listings had come from in the M-In Accounts. He finished this by asking what they had to say.

Silence reigned. When no answer emerged he spoke again.

"From the evidence that I have from my investigations I will be citing Señoras Cárdenas and Carbajal, as executives of ServiArquitectos and ServiArquitectos itself as
imputados
and involved in premeditated and systematic bribery of public officials and others in pursuit of unlawful gains."

At the desk in front of
Juez
Garibey the two lady executives began to rant and rave at him. Their lawyers were hard-put to gather them up and persuade them to leave before they made matters worse.

Meanwhile,
Juez
Garibey was exultant. He knew that ServiArquitectos was on the proverbial ropes, and he had not even had to bring the additional details that Pedro's researches were revealing, that the ServiArquitectos slush fund might have been as much as ten times larger than what ORS had been looking to recover.

Thursday: Moncloa, Madrid

Juan Pastor Nieves paced his office. He was perplexed. For the third time in as many hours he had received calls from well-regarded
Partido Conservador
members seeking his help in squashing the enquiries of this
Juez
Garibey. Moments earlier the most recent had come from a member of his inner circle, someone he had trusted for at least two decades. What they had in common was feeling threatened by the enquiries of an official all seemed to regard as a madman.

Yet, of all the calls, it was an earlier one from Adoración Carbajal that had made the most impact. They had worked together for years, he on the party's inside, she from the outside, providing each other with support and encouragement. In fact, he recalled her company had done much of the work to overhaul the
Partido Conservador
headquarters. That had become expensive after the discovery of asbestos but ServiArquitectos came through without charging more, though how the company had managed this with no extra invoicing he was never quite sure, and never asked.

The result was a gleaming modern electronic election campaign centre with which to impress the party faithful. Not that it had proved much use in the most recent elections.
La crisis
had shaped shock results in which both the PC and
la Piz
had lost ground to independents and alternative parties and had thus been forced into a grand coalition if only to hold onto sufficient power to provide the 'jobs-for-the-boys' that were paid for by the state. The results were no vindication for all that fancy technology.

The consequent coalition of left and right had started well. It became even better when that left wing firebrand, Hernando Torres, had been good enough to drop dead in South America. Pastor Nieves recalled hearing the news at breakfast on the radio and how he'd smiled at his destiny.

He already possessed the leadership of the PC. At that moment he was certain he would gain the post of
el
Presidente del Gobierno
. So it had proved.

The only fly before arriving in Moncloa was the presence of Isidoro Silvestre. Pastor Nieves couldn't stand the man before, and even less afterwards. Silvestre had even had the nerve to protest about kicking out Hernando Cortes' widow and children from their home mere days after his funeral.

But he, Juan Pastor Nieves, who had scrabbled so long to attain this position, had been in no mood for sentimentality. He insisted they had to make way for him yet he had judged it safer to keep Silvestre in place, gradually neutering him. Doing so quietened the voices of the
la Piz
who rightly feared he was going to diminish its influence as soon as possible. Better to have your enemies close than distant, and all that.

Pastor Nieves did not think of himself as an unpleasant man, though there were many in the
la Piz
and even the PC who privately would tell of his ruthlessness as well as chill personality. He knew his wife supported him and that was all he cared.

They were childless, which had caused problems for them both in her thirties, but she had eventually accepted their fate. In place she had virtually adopted a distant relative's orphaned son and continued to dote on him. Pastor Nieves was not fond of the boy, now a man. But he had proved on occasion rather practical in assisting the pursuit of Pastor Nieves' own political ascension.

Another call came, this time from his wife who was away from Madrid up north in Huesca for a medical managers' meeting. By coincidence she wanted to talk about her adopted son. Apparently he was going to have to appear next week before this same Garibey. Would her darling husband please do something about arranging to have her son's citation cancelled?

Pastor Nieves gasped. "Why does everybody think I can rearrange the judiciary's agenda at a day's notice?"

In fact this was more or less the same as what Adoración had asked, except she had already been in front of Garibey.

"But you are
el Presidente del Gobierno
. Your predecessors did it. Why can't you?"

It was a telling jab which went right to the heart of Juan Pastor Nieves' ambitions and self-importance. He was the most important person in Spain, after His Majesty of course, and arguably more important because he was elected rather than the inheritor of a decrepit title the authenticity of which had been dubious at best in the twentieth century and was more so in the twenty-first.

His thoughts took a new direction. How much better it would be if he, Juan Pastor Nieves, was
Presidente de España
,
Jefe de Estado
, in common with the Presidents of France or the United States. He permitted himself the luxury of imagining what it would be like to be Head of State.

He shook himself. His wife had pricked his need to be seen to be executive. She was rather good at this, as he was only too ruefully aware.

Damn! This meant he would have to talk with the unspeakable Silvestre. He didn't want to on a matter such as this, because it would mean asking Silvestre for help that in turn would reaffirm Silvestre's position as
Jefe de Gabinete
, the last outcome he desired as he intrigued to render Silvestre little more than a tamed puppet.

Picking up the internal phone he requested Silvestre attend him. He liked the sound of that word 'attend'. It possessed connotations of power that pleased him.

Silvestre entered. The Prime Minister described what he wanted. Silvestre declined to help, pointing out in calm tones that not only did he, Silvestre, not have the authority to do as the prime minister was describing but also suggesting that it might be better to wait.

"It might be better to wait?" Inside Pastor Nieves screamed with rage. Was Silvestre playing with him? This, after all, was the very same tactic he himself had used time and time again on Silvestre, and most other events if he was honest, to justify sidestepping decisions or acting.

The cheek of the man! He decided to manifest himself at his most prime ministerial. Silvestre would not be able to resist. "Kindly execute what I have just ordered you to carry out."

To Pastor Nieves' astonishment Silvestre did not cower or run to do as instructed. Instead Pastor Nieves heard words uttered with a coldness that was utterly unfamiliar.

"Prime Minister, you're asking me to interfere with the legal system. Others may have done this in the past for your predecessors. I will not. I advise you not to pursue this. If you persist you will have my resignation in writing for tomorrow morning. I'll stay, of course, in my post until you appoint my successor."

Isidoro hesitated, before deciding not say more. He turned to leave, thereby depriving himself of the singular pleasure of seeing Juan Pastor Nieves,
el
Presidente del Gobierno,
gasping in disbelief and resembling a beached whale.

Friday: Madrid

Rafael Garibey had gone out early, mildly disguised, to buy the newspapers. In retrospect he was glad he used his long coat and a hat. A mass of photographers was outside his front door. He beat a hasty retreat upstairs before they realised it was him on his way to the front door.

He cajoled his wife to do his dirty work. She agreed, though unhappily. She was not in a fit state to be snapped for
¡Hola!
she groused.

She was lucky. The horde didn't recognise her and she made it back, armed with
El País
,
El Mundo
,
ABC
and a couple of others for good measure. Just buying them she was astonished at the front page publicity generated by her husband. This was not what she anticipated in the twilight of his long career.