Bárcenas affair

The Bárcenas affair is a corruption scandal in Spain that affects the conservative People's Party (PP), one of the country's main political parties. Following revelations that Luis Bárcenas, who served as party treasurer and senator, held 48 million euros in Swiss bank accounts, extracts of handwritten accounts, the so-called "Bárcenas papers" (los papeles de Bárcenas) were published in the press. Those accounts allegedly indicate that the PP kept, for many years, a parallel bookkeeping system to record undeclared and illegal cash donations, and used them to pay bonuses to senior members of the party as well as for daily party expenses.