Abstract
High-level corruption fraud has had an increased impact on the social and political debate in Spain, especially since the beginning of the financial crisis when several cuts in social spending were made. Greater attention is being paid to where and howthe government spends its public funding. This paper explores the extent and forms of political corruption in Spanish public procurement. Its main contribution is the rich analytical discussion of high-profile corruption scandals involving public procurement, such as the Gürtel case or the Palma Arena case, with particular focus on ‘red flags’ indicating likely corruption in public procurement procedures. It also provides a comprehensive introduction to the Spanish public procurement institutional structure, a comparison with theEuropean public procurement directives, and a broad statistical overview of public procurement in Spain. Another relevant feature of this paper is the in-depth description on how and where to access public procurement information, indicating the main issues that may arise which can be a risk to transparency. Deeper knowledge of the structure, regulatory frameworkand nature of Spanish public procurement allows, not only to understand the large amount of current corruption scandals in Spain, but also exploresthe failures andpotential improvements.
Gamir, A. F. (2016). Mapping high-level corruption risks in Spanish public procurement.