Spain’s industry minister became the latest casualty of the widening scandal triggered by the Panama Papers data leak when he resigned all his political offices after incorrectly denying any links to tax havens.
José Manuel Soria resigned both his parliamentary seat and his post as minister of industry, energy and tourism in the country’s caretaker government on Friday. He also gave up his role as regional president of the ruling centre-right Popular party in the Canary Islands, which he represented in parliament.
“No one who’s operated in tax havens can be in the government,” Spain’s acting finance minister, Cristóbal Montoro, said in a press conference several hours after Mr Soria’s resignation.
Spanish media revealed this week that Mr Soria had been named in the Panama Papers, the leak of more than 11m documents from Mossack Fonseca, a secretive law firm that specialises in setting up offshore companies in tax havens.
The data release, perhaps the biggest such leak in history, has already led to the departure from office of Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson, Iceland’s prime minister, who has sought to depict his move as temporary.
It has also heaped political pressure on David Cameron, Britain’s premier, whose father was named in the papers, and has revealed that a member of the inner circle of Russian President Vladimir Putin was connected to a network of companies that transferred at least $2bn.
In a resignation letter Mr Soria said he had taken his decision to quit “considering the obvious damage that this situation is causing the government of Spain, the Popular party, my fellow activists and voters”.
His name emerged as a director of a Panama-based shell company, albeit briefly and more than two decades ago.
Mr Soria denied the allegation, and went on to state that he had never had “any links with a company based in Panama or other tax havens”. Later in the week, the El Mundo daily published a document appearing to show Mr Soria had served as a director of a Jersey-based company as recently as 2002.
The minister’s resignation letter acknowledged what Mr Soria described as a “succession of errors made over the past few days regarding my explanations of my business activities” preceding his entry into politics in 1995.
He blamed those inaccuracies on “the lack of precise information about events that occurred more than 20 years ago”. He added that the business interests at issue were not “connected or linked in any way with the exercise of any political responsibilities”.
Mr Soria’s resignation comes at a particularly awkward time for Mariano Rajoy, Spain’s acting prime minister and the Popular party leader.
The country has been in political limbo since December, when an inconclusive general election left Spain with a deeply fragmented parliament and no obvious government majority.
Party leaders have struggled to form a workable coalition government this year, but have made little progress so far. If parliament fails to elect a new prime minister by May 2, the king will have to dissolve the chamber and call a repeat general election. Most officials and analyst believe a new vote is now all but certain — meaning Mr Rajoy will have to face an already disgruntled electorate with the additional baggage of the scandal whipped up by Mr Soria’s resignation.
@ Agency report.
