One of Spain’s biggest newspapers has published the accounts ledger of a secret slush fund used to funnel secret cash payments to ruling Popular Party ministers including Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy.

El Mundo says it has delivered the documents to Spain’s high court for investigation.  The papers purportedly show that Rajoy received secret cash payments during 1997, 1998 and 1999 when he was a minister in Jose Maria Aznar's government.

All this comes from the handwritten ledger of the jailed former treasurer of he Popular Party (PP), Luis Barcenas, who is confirming that the handwriting is his own.  The conservative Popular Party solicited cash from construction magnates, and distributed it to party leaders; undeclared and untaxed, and in violation of a 1995 law that bans supplementary payments to members of the government. 

Photocopies of some of the documents appeared in the rival El Pais newspaper earlier in the year, and were denied by Rajoy and others. 

But, “The Luis Barcenas originals published by El Mundo today pulverize the alibi used until now by the PP to deny the authenticity of its ex-treasurer's papers,” or so El Mundo claims.

The story is causing widespread anger among Spaniards suffering through a long and deep recession and cruel austerity cuts.