11.01.09, 08:25 AM EST  http://www.forbes.com/feeds/afx/2009/11/01/afx7071608.html

MADRID, Nov 1 (Reuters) - A Spanish newspaper said on Sunday it had calculated that money laundering, bribery, tax fraud and other sharp practices by politicians had cost the country 4.2 billion euros ($6.23 billion) in the last 10 years.

El Mundo said it had calculated the figure based on court records and investigations of just 28 of the biggest such cases.

'The real amount is, without doubt, much higher than this. In a poll of our readers, 89 percent believe there is some corruption within their local municipality,' El Mundo wrote in an editorial.

The newspaper's investigation followed a string of scandals and arrests over the last few weeks, seriously denting Spaniards' confidence in their elected leaders.

On Friday, the deputy leader of Spain's conservative opposition Popular Party (PP) apologised for a chain of public embarrassments that have seen their support sliding in the polls.

Later that day, five politicians from the northern region of Catalunya, including a mayor from the ruling Socialist party, were handed prison sentences on a long list of corruption charges.

While corruption scandals have infected all of Spain's political parties, the PP has been hit the hardest, according to a poll published by the El Pais newspaper.

Daily reports of new wrongdoings by PP members, and a perceived failure by the party's leader Mariano Rajoy to manage the resulting chaos in the party's ranks, have helped divert attention from the economic crisis, the poll showed.

If an election were to be held now, the Socialists would squeeze a narrow victory over the conservatives, El Pais showed in its survey of 501 respondents from across the country.

The same poll showed one month ago, before the spate of corruption charges within the PP, that Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero would have faced a clear defeat against the conservatives.

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