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Corruption trial involving Rajoy's party begins in Spain
Dec 12, 2011, 11:03 GMT
Valencia, Spain - Two former regional leaders of Spanish election winner Mariano Rajoy's conservative People's Party (PP) went on trial Monday in a major corruption case.
Rajoy is due to be sworn in as prime minister on December 21 after ousting Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's Socialists in November 20 parliamentary elections.
Franscisco Camps, who was prime minister of the eastern region of Valencia from 2003 to last July, is known as being close Rajoy, who has supported him throughout the corruption scandal.
Camps faces charges of accepting men's suits for a total of more than 10,000 euros (13,000 dollars) from entrepreneurs involved with what has become known as the Guertel network.
Dozens of entrepreneurs and PP politicians are suspected of involvement with the network, with companies allegedly bribing regional and municipal officials to get lucrative contracts in several regions.
Camps won an absolute majority in the regional elections in May, but resigned a few months later over the corruption allegations.
He went on trial in Valencia with his co-accused, Ricardo Costa, who was forced to step down as PP secretary general for Valencia over similar accusations.
The Guertel scandal has been running in Spain for years, but it failed to damage the PP in the elections, which were dominated by the country's economic crisis.
An investigating judge named the affair Guertel ('belt' in German) after the alleged head of the network, businessman Francisco Correa, whose surname means 'belt' in Spanish.
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