Fighting corruption costs the Spanish almost €90 billion each year

THE war against corruption costs the Spanish more than €87 billion each year, enough to undo cuts in health, education, and dependency.

Every day an average of six people involved in corruption cases are arrested, with a total of 7,140 in the past four years.

The Malaya case alone cost €2 billion, while €1.2 billion has already been spent on the ERE scandal and €3 billion on the investigation for the Pujol case.

Corruption costs each Spaniard more than €500 a year, a figure that continues to grow as the number of cases rise.

Minister of the Interior Jorge Fernando Díaz said: “If there were 389 arrests for corruption in Spain in 2010, in the past year there were 2,442.”

Each month an average of ten new cases of corruption are uncovered, with Social Security fraud the most frequent case, making up more than 16% of the total.

Bribery, corruption, and fraud follow with more than 8%.