MADRID, Jan. 24 (Xinhua) -- The Valencia branch of Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's ruling People's Party had financed election campaigns with money paid in bribes following the awards of public works contracts, former party general secretary of the region admitted on Wednesday.
Ricardo Costa was giving evidence in the ongoing "Gurtel" cash-for-favor scandal which is investigating wide-scale corruption claims involving the People's Party in the regions of Valencia and Madrid.
Costa blamed Francisco Camps, the former leader of the Valencia branch of the People's Party and the Valencian Regional Assembly, for the corruption.
According to Costa, Camps and Juan Cotino, former president of the Valencian Cortes, had ordered that the party campaigns for the 2007 regional and municipal elections and the 2008 general election campaign to be "financed with black money", given to the party in return for awarding public contracts.
Costa explained he was shown "envelopes with cash inside them and I was told it was money that businessmen had given and it had been at the request of Camps".
Costa alleged that the People's Party had received "cash from businessmen who had contracts with the Valencian government", as well as through a company called "Orange Market" which issued false bills for services at party meetings and election rallies, which were actually "paid by other businesspeople".
The amount raised in this way, Costa said, was around a million euros (1.24 million U.S. dollars) and that the method appeared to have been "previously established".
When questioned in an interview on Spanish radio station Onda Cero on Wednesday about the apparent corruption in the Valencia branch of his party, Rajoy said he knew "nothing" about it.
The Spanish Prime Minister made history in July 2017 when he appeared in court as a witness in the "Gurtel" case, after his petition to give evidence by video-conference was rejected.
