27 September 2010, 12:12 PM

http://www.dominicantoday.com/dr/world/2010/9/27/37097/Spains-major-corruption-trial-begins-linked-to-top-Dominican-politicos

Madrid.- Spain’s major political corruption trial in the modern era began Monday with 95 defendants accused of money laundering, prevarication, embezzlement of public funds and fraud in the City Council of Marbella, with ramifications in Dominican Republic’s top political circles.

The corruption plot involves municipal officials, industrialists, lawyers and even show business figures, which made the trial’s first day into something similar to a blockbuster film debut, with hundreds of media in court, including paparazzi.

It’s expected that the trial, to be held without the presence of TV cameras, will last one year and the defendants won’t begin testimony until November.

The case known as "Malaya" exploded in 2006 after a years long police and judicial probe, and led to the arrests of almost 20 Marbella Council members and two ex mayors, on charges of forming part of the biggest political corruption network since the restoration of Spain’s democracy at the end of the 1970s.

The plot’s alleged mastermind Juan Antonio Roca is the only defendant still in jail, since 2006, while 94 others were released after serving different periods of temporary incarceration and await convictions from the so-called macro-trial.

Roca, who headed Marbella’s Urban Planning Dept. for 14 years, faces up to 30 years in prison as the prosecution requests, is charged with setting up bribes for Council members from industrialists to pay for urban-planning favors.

The fraud began in the mid 1990s and lasted almost one decade.

The indictment names Roca as having pillaged municipal coffers and of amassing an immense fortune, laundering more than 240 million euros (323 million dollars) through a complex web of 70 companies.

While in prison Roca was one of Spain’s richest men with assets ranging from fighting bull ranches, purebred horse farms to artworks. A police video even shows a Joan Miro painting hanging in the bathroom in his Marbella residence.

In addition to a jail sentence the Prosecutor wants Roca fined 810 million euros (1.09 billion dollars) for administrative prevarication, money laundering, embezzlement, fraud and bribe, among others crimes.

For another main defendant is Julian Muñoz, Marbella Mayor from 2002 to 2003, charged with administrative prevarication, embezzlement of public coffers and bribe, the Prosecutor requests 10 years in jail and a 400,000 euro (539,020 dollars) fine. Muñoz frequently appears in show business venues.

During his tenure as mayor, Muñoz had a romantic relationship with the singer Isabel Pantoja, who the Office of the Prosecutor says her assets illegally grew thanks to that relationship. She is to be tried separately.