Walter Finch
‘I SPENT €1 million on cocaine, parties and gifts’ confessed the former driver to Andalucia’s Employment Minister.
The so-called ‘cocaine chauffeur’ is finally on trial over the Junta’s shocking €1 billion ERE corruption scandal between 2000 and 2010.
Juan Francisco Trujillo told judges this week that he spent up to €25,000 a month on booze and cocaine for himself and his former boss, Employment Minister Javier Guerrero.
At a rate of ‘five to 10 grams’ a day, he admitted he spent €1.475,000 in state subsidies over a couple of years.
He is now facing 14 years in prison over his involvement in the ERE case, that syphoned money meant for unemployment packages to a so-called ‘reptile fund’ to be used by politicians and their friends.
At a trial at Sevilla court, the former official chauffeur is facing 14 years in prison.
His ex-boss, Guerrero, who died in 2020, played a central role in the pilfering of around €680 million from public coffers as the local minister responsible for distributing EU funds.
Trujillo colluded with Guerro to set up bogus firms in order to benefit from a Brussels subsidy of €450,000 per company.
The million euros in EU funds was then snaffled up and spent on coke for himself and Guerrero, who had awarded him the cash, as well as purchasing land and building a house.
He also spent €70,000 on paintings, watches, a piano, clothes and mobile phones.
“I continue to admit my guilt,” Trujillo told the court, after dodging jail after an official judicial investigation into the scandal concluded six years ago.
READ MORE:
- ‘They knew all along’: Police insist leaders of the Junta were behind ERE scandal
- EXPLAINER: How €680 million of Junta de Andalucia cash was embezzled in ERE scandal, Spain’s biggest EVER public money corruption case
- Verdict for architects of infamous ERE scandal which saw almost €1 BILLION stolen from Andalucia taxpayers due TOMORROW after almost decade-long legal battle
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