Vox refuses to identify which bank lent them more than nine million euros last year to finance the municipal and general campaign. According to ‘El País’No member of the party led by Santiago Abascal wanted to specify when the law on party financing required them to do so.
The far-right party is hiding behind the fact that it does not want to name names. avoiding the “demonization” of the bank who lent the money to the training. However, the defense of Abascal’s camp falls under its own weight, especially when Article 14.8 of the Law on the Financing of Political Parties comes into play.
In this section, it is clearly stated that all political parties must indicate on their respective websites – within a maximum period of one month from the date of sending to the Court of Auditors, which corresponds to June 30 of each year – the balance, the income statement and, in particular, the amount of credits awaiting amortizationwith indication of the entity granting the aid.
As ‘El País’ indicates through sources consulted by the media themselves, everything indicates that the bank that would have granted the loan would have been a Hungarian financial institution close to Prime Minister Víktor Orbán.
In Vox’s annual accounts for the 2023 financial year, it is indicated that it has used two loans to meet expenses and finance last year’s election campaigns. The credit in question is approximately 6.5 million euros for the national elections of July 23, which was increased by an additional 192,082 euros. In the case of regional governments, the amount was 2.6 million for the municipal elections.
In June, when the party’s accounts were published, the report stated that 1.8 million had already been returned corresponding to the capital borrowed for the municipal elections. However, the payment of an additional 7,386,574 euros was still pending.
“The information published on the website is that which must be made public.. Everything else, in the hands of the Court of Auditors, will not be made public. And in this case, because we do not want to contribute to the demonization of certain banks for having lent money to Vox,” assured ‘El País’ one of Vox’s spokesmen. They also explain that the required information is in the hands of the Court of Auditors, but that is not enough because according to the law cited above, this information must be public.
