GRECO. It would be great to write about the Greek-born
painter, sculptor and architect of the Spanish Renaissance.
Sorry. In this instance ‘GRECO’ is the
Group of States against Corruption, established in 1999 by the Council of
Europe. GRECO’s objective; to improve
the capacity of its members to fight corruption.
GRECO published
its fourth evaluation round ‘Corruption prevention in respect of members of parliament, judges and prosecutors’, Interim Compliance Report, Spain on 3rd
January 2018. If it was a Greco, it
wouldn’t be described as his best work.
GRECO concludes
that “…none of the eleven recommendations contained in the Fourth Round
Evaluation Report had been satisfactorily implemented or dealt with in a
satisfactory manner by Spain.” Seven recommendations have been partly
implemented; four recommendations have not been implemented.
The eleven
recommendations covered:
●
corruption prevention in respect of members of
parliament
●
the legislative framework governing the
General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ)
●
objective criteria and evaluation
requirements be laid down in law for the appointment of the higher ranks of the
judiciary… in order to ensure that these appointments do not cast any doubt on
the independence, impartiality and transparency of this process.
●
a code of conduct for judges be adopted.
●
recommended extending the limitation
period for disciplinary procedures.
●
corruption prevention in respect of
prosecutors recommended
●
a code of conduct for prosecutors be
adopted and made easily accessible to the public.
●
recommended developing a specific
regulatory framework for disciplinary
matters in the prosecution service, which
is vested with appropriate guarantees of
fairness and effectiveness and subject to
independent and impartial review.
The low level of
compliance meant that Spain was graded as “globally unsatisfactory”.
Why is this relevant to the Catalan political prisoners and exiles?
Because GRECO
highlights just how close the Prosecutor General is to the government in
Madrid. GRECO wants the prosecutor to be clearly separate from the government,
so that communication between the two is out in the open;
“…it is
key that communication
between the Prosecutor General and
the Government is
made in a
transparent manner, in
writing and published in
an adequate way.”
This is important
because of the widespread reports that the Prosecutor General, and the judges
have been in close contact with the Justice Minister, Rafael Catalá Polo over
the Catalan political prisoners. Sr. Catalá is uncannily able to predict
exactly what the judges will decide – for example, predicting the detention order against the rapper Valtonyc. In a clumsy attempt to swop prisoners, the
minister denies having ordered the arrest of former HSBC employee Hervé Falciani
in order to use him as a bargaining chip to win back Marta Rovira and AnnaGabriel, both exiled in Switzerland.
The report
finishes like this:
Finally, GRECO
invites the authorities of Spain to authorise, as soon as possible, the
publication of
the report, to translate the report into the national language and to
make this
translation public.
Unsurprisingly,
the Spanish government has chosen not to do so…
