Spain enthralled as huge corruption trial begins - The Irish Times - Tue, Sep 28, 2010: "The prosecutor is demanding a total of 500 years for the 95 accused – among them three former mayors of the Costa del Sol resort of Marbella, senior town hall officials and many leading businessmen.
They took their seats in the dock in a specially enlarged courtroom, charged with a string of offences, including bribery and corruption, money laundering, tax evasion and misuse of municipal funds.
It is just over five years since it was realised that €2.4 billion of Marbella’s municipal funds had been plundered.
It seems that the web of corruption began during the term in office of the Grupo Independista Liberal, the political party formed by the late Jésus Gil y Gil, the flamboyant mayor who drove a silver Rolls Royce, a gift from a Saudi Arabian businessman, who occasionally rode his white stallion through the streets and later took over the Atlético Madrid football club.
When the scale of corruption emerged in 2005 and so many officials were detained, the regional government was forced to step in – the first time in the era of Spanish democracy that an elected council has been expelled from office.
They found the vaults empty and Marbella over €512 million in debt, with no money to pay even the smallest bills to local businesses, rubbish collectors and cleaners."
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