Madrid - Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez on Thursday told a tetchy Senate committee hearing into a corruption scandal that has rocked his minority leftist government that the probe was "a circus". Corruption investigations targeting former Socialist heavyweights and Sanchez's wife have embarrassed Sanchez, who took office in 2018 pledging to clean up Spanish politics after the conservative opposition was convicted in its own graft scandal. The hearing before a Senate committee will grill Sanchez over a complicated affair involving alleged kickbacks in exchange for public contracts for sanitary equipment during the Covid-19 pandemic. The scandal has ensnared ex-transport minister Jose Luis Abalos and former senior Socialist official Santos Cerdan, both former close allies of Sanchez who helped him rise to power. Abalos's former adviser Koldo Garcia is another key suspect in the case that has seen Cerdan jailed and police enter Socialist headquarters in Madrid, in damaging images for Sanchez. The opposition conservative Popular Party (PP), which commands a majority in the Senate, seeks to prove that Sanchez knew about or participated in the murky manoeuvres. But responding to the committee's conservative president, who had just rebuked him in a bad-tempered opening to the hearing, Sanchez fired back that "I think this is a circus." Sanchez told the committee that Socialist party funding was "absolutely clean" and that receiving cash payments -- linked by the police investigation to the alleged corruption -- was "perfectly legal" for official expenses if they came with receipts.
The summoning of Sanchez is part of the PP's relentless focus on alleged Socialist corruption in a bid to force early elections.
Sanchez has rebuffed calls to resign and call elections, although he has acknowledged he once considered quitting as the pressure grew.
A damning police report this year that implicated Cerdan in the scandal briefly threatened to rip apart the Socialist-led coalition with the far-left Sumar party.
In July, Sanchez unveiled a package of anti-corruption measures in a bid to repair ties with Sumar and an array of fringe and regional separatist parties, without which the government cannot pass legislation.
Separate corruption investigations have targeted Sanchez's wife Begona Gomez and his younger brother David Sanchez, dogging his government for more than a year.
In another affair embarrassing the government, the Socialist-appointed top prosecutor will go on trial next week accused of leaking legal secrets against the partner of the Madrid region's influential PP leader.