The vice president of the European Investment Bank has been questioned by an investigating judge in Spain about her role in a corruption scandal involving public funds.
Magdalena Alvarez, who is European Investment Bank™s (EIB) second head, appeared before Judge Mercedes Alaya on Tuesday, as she had been named an official suspect in a case involving fictitious early retirement and severance payments from a public fund.
The judge argued that while Alvarez was finance minister of the Andalusia region between 1994 to 2004, she had been a key player in setting up of the labor force adjustment fund by the regional government.
An estimated 140 million euros (USD 190 million) was either misused or embezzled from the fund between 2001 and 2010.
Some people have reportedly received retirement payments even though they had never worked for the companies in question.
Alvarez denied knowledge of any wrongdoing and claimed that the public money transfers had been done within the law.
After serving as Andalusia™s finance minister, Alvarez was appointed infrastructure minister under Socialist government of former prime minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, from 2004 to 2009.
In 2010, Alvarez was appointed as the second head of the EIB, which finances investment projects furthering European Union policy objectives.
Spain has been hit with a number of recent corruption scandals, which have caused outrage among its citizens.
In the country™s biggest-ever corruption trials, 53 people, including former top officials in the city of Marbella, were convicted on October 4 of accepting bribes in exchange for building permits.
Furthermore, Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy™s conservative party came under fire after Spain™s daily El Mundo published on June 9 excerpts from the ledger entries of a secret slush fund run by the People™s Party, implicating the premier and other senior party members in a corruption scandal.
Rajoy is alleged to have received 25,200 euros (USD 34,000) a year between 1997 and 2008, mostly from construction firms in exchange for state contracts.
CAH/SS
Copyright: Press TV