Huge wind farm corruption scandal in Spain

Only part of the Spanish press covers the story, and television channels ignore it so far. The wind business is taboo in this country, where Greenpeace and other wind-crazy NGOs have a huge audience.

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Tax inspectors have only started to reveal their findings in this complex web of corruption: €110 million worth of illegal commissions paid in Castilla y León, one of Spain's 17 states (Spain is a de facto federation of 17 "autonomous communities": Catalonia, Valencia, Andalusia, the Basque country, etc.). The Spanish IRS is presently investigating in other states. At the national level, illicit enrichment at the cost of taxpayers could easily top one billion euros. Unexplained payments to public officials received from Switzerland, shares in obscure windfarm companies resold for hundreds, even thousands of times the initial capital invested, home mortgages paid off by opaque entities, homes renovated by generous donators, etc. Some names and amounts are already known, but these suspected officials decline to comment. One of them now lives in Poland.

"Private renewable energy firms may have paid more than €110 million in commissions to government officials and local businessmen in Castilla y León to help them obtain licenses and push through paperwork to install wind farms across the region between 2004 and 2007, tax inspectors said."

Read more in one of Spain's leading newspaper, English edition:El País Wind corruption is also rampant in France, the United States, and most probably in other countries as well. Where there are government subsidies, there is fraud. Where subsidies are huge, fraud is huge. Wind corruption in France: in this video, an anonymous windfarm victim relates that commissions paid to village councillors to vote in favour of a wind project range from €100,000 to €150,000. The Big Swindle Wind corruption in the US: read about the Obama bundlers.Windfarms used to finance political parties