PM Sanchez calls graft panel 'a circus'

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez yesterday told a tetchy Senate committee hearing into a corruption scandal that has rocked his minority leftist government that the probe was “a circus”.

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Corruption investigations targeting former Socialist heavyweights and Mr Sanchez’s wife have embarrassed Mr Sanchez, who took office in 2018 pledging to clean up Spanish politics after the conservative opposition was convicted in its own graft scandal.

The hearing before a Senate committee is to grill Mr 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 Mr Sanchez who helped him rise to power.