Every self-respecting corruption case has a good dose of extortion. Extortion is the pressure that one person exerts on another, through threats, violence and intimidation, in such a way that they are forced to perform or omit an act that benefits the extortionist and causes damage that can affect a multitude of assets.
In the large corruption operations that have come to light in recent years, the focus is usually on data such as economic damage, types of crime, penalties imposed, political parties affected...
In many cases, the moral character of the corrupt is briefly outlined, so that in the collective imagination eccentricities such as the possession of wild animals, works of art in the bathroom and other banal ostentations are added to the dump trucks of whores and lines of cocaine.
However, the human emptiness that accompanies corruption is much deeper than stealing a Goya from your own family to continue pretending to be who you say you are but have never been, or sexually abusing women to celebrate acts of corruption.
Extortion is inseparable from corruption plots. The telephone interventions of the macro-causes of corruption not only clearly reflect human decadence in the form of deception, betrayals, dependencies, links and false relationships... but also reveal a common thread in the form of fear and submission to extortion.
In the Unión case, for example, the telephone conversations reveal that the island's business coffee table knew perfectly well about the attempted bribery of Carlos Espino. How is Espino doing? Some repeatedly asked the briber. And it was not interest in the fate of the Costa Roja land, it was interest in knowing if the former Minister of Territorial Policy of the Island Council of Lanzarote had fallen into the web of extortion. Well, once you fall into the spider web, everyone knows your price and it will be a matter of days before they come and put it on the table to demand another illegal business from you. You have no way out, once you have agreed to enter the game of corruption, they will not let you out because you are stuck to the spider web by the poison of extortion.
I remember a conversation with a person who pointed out the members of a local corporation for their price, like pieces of lamb in a butcher shop. This one is worth this, this one is worth that, we pay this one with this... this, this and this knew that once you enter the corruption market, you can't get out.
The relationships between businessmen, politicians and officials in corruption plots clearly reflect the addictive adrenaline generated by continuous dealings with power. Such is the dependence on such a drug that it is common to see them running after money, mutually extorting each other under threats of all kinds to, finally, conclude with a patrimonial income resulting from a crime that will allow them to continue greasing the machinery of the trivialization of evil into which they have turned their lives and everything they touch.
I have remembered this Dantean spectacle on the occasion of the latest corruption case affecting the Community of Madrid. Why do they remain in their political positions after publicly denouncing the cruelty and damage to their personal and family life that the political partner is causing them? Because they have no way out, they are already stuck to the spider web.
Having read the recorded conversations, the threats of personal, family, professional and political destruction, it is not difficult to imagine the fear. That fear that paralyzes, blocks and leads to the irrationality of continuing to walk towards the abyss as the only option.
In the collective imagination are the audio libraries, those hours and hours of recording in collection, like weapons of destruction or tools of impunity. We know the recordings that have been publicly released and that affect party colleagues, profession or government, how many have not been released? How much is what remains to be released worth? Will we ever know about the extortion power of professional recorders such as Inspector Villarejo or Magistrate Alba?.
Extortion has become an essential element of the exercise of power. The assets affected by a web of extortion that has ceased to be anecdotal to become systemic are many and varied. Public institutions are the first victims, suffering continuous discredit, as damaging to the normal functioning of democracy as that which affects the fundamental powers of the Rule of Law. When the authorities called to preside over the Judiciary, the State Attorney General's Office, the political parties or the public institutions are susceptible to being extorted, the victim is democracy.