At one o'clock on Tuesday afternoon, Bartolomé Cursach left the Provincial Court in Palma, his formal acquittal on all charges having been confirmed. As well as the BCM owner, fourteen other defendants, including his right-hand man, Tolo Sbert, were cleared.
This followed the Prosecutor's Office having dropped charges and two private prosecutions having been abandoned. The court still has one outstanding matter - a private prosecution against two Palma police officers by a bar owner - but what had been billed as one of Mallorca's biggest ever corruption trials has effectively ended.
While the trial may be over, the Cursach affair has most certainly not reached its conclusion. The Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office has asked the court to forward part of what transpired during the trial to a court of instruction and for an investigation into the original investigating judge and anti-corruption prosecutor. The office wants Judge Manuel Penalva, prosecutor Miguel Ángel Subirán and the inspector of the National Police money launderiing unit, Blanca Ruiz Alfaro, to be investigated for crimes of coercion, illegal detention and others.
The office believes that four witnesses who testified during the trial could have been illegally detained so that they could "reflect" on their statements and respond in ways that the judge and prosecutor had wanted. The office doesn't include Tolo Cursach or Tolo Sbert, as the Balearic High Court has already ruled on their arrests.
The Prosecutor's Office has also requested that the testimony of four witnesses be subtracted for lying during the trial. These include Blanca Ruiz Alfaro and a witness who maintained that he couldn't remember anything because he had had a scooter accident. Defence lawyers claim that Palma police officers who now occupy command positions also lied.