MADRID: Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez will on Thursday attempt to offer explanations to hostile lawmakers investigating a corruption scandal that has threatened to topple his minority left-wing government.
Corruption probes targeting former Socialist heavyweights and Sanchez’s wife have embarrassed a leader who took office in 2018 pledging to clean up Spanish politics after the conservative opposition was convicted in its own graft scandal.
The hours-long hearing before a Senate committee will grill Sanchez over a complicated affair involving alleged kickbacks in exchange for public contracts for sanitary equipment during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The scandal has ensnared ex-transport minister Jose Luis Abalos and former senior Socialist official Santos Cerdan, both former close allies of Sanchez who helped him rise to power.
Abalos’s former adviser Koldo Garcia is another key suspect in the case that has seen Cerdan jailed and police enter Socialist headquarters in Madrid, in damaging images for Sanchez.
