Bartolomé Cursach (left), following a court appearance. | Alejandro Sepúlveda

TW
0

The trial of Bartolomé Cursach, the owner of BCM in Magalluf and other businesses within the Cursach Group, is scheduled to start on June 13. He was arrested in February 2017 as part of an investigation into police corruption. Among the charges was bribery of police officers in Calvia and Palma to show favour to his businesses and to disadvantage competitors.

He left prison in April 2018, bail of one million euros having been paid. In the meantime, investigations continued, and the culmination of these is the so-called "macro-trial" that will start later this month. This trial, it has been said, will be the longest in Mallorca's judicial history - longer even than the Caso Nóos trial that involved Iñaki Urdangarin, King Felipe's brother-in-law.

However, the trial will now take less time than had been forecast. Twenty-three people in all were due to have gone on trial, but charges against seven of them have been dropped. The seven include a former director-general of tourism with the Balearic tourism ministry, Pilar Carbonell, and Jaime Llado, the director of Tito's nightclub, a Cursach Group business. Fifty-four of 142 witnesses will now not be required to give evidence. It is understood that accusations now only relate to Palma and not to Calvia.

Where Bartolomé Cursach is concerned, the prosecution service had been looking for a sentence of eight and a half years. This has been reduced to eighteen months. Central to this reduced demand is the withdrawal of charges of bribery related to orgies that were said to have been organised for police officers at Tito's. The prosecution now believes that evidence regarding these alleged orgies is "implausible".

Since the "caso Cursach" first erupted in February 2017, the investigating judge, Manuel Penalva, and the anti-corruption prosecutor, Miguel Ángel Subirán, have been removed.

Thirteen of those who will still go on trial are police officers; a fourteenth who was accused has died. Sentence demands for nearly all of them have been reduced.