spanish politics

Credit Suisse has been fined $388mn by US and British regulators, and Spain is facing an uncertain political future as the right and left failed to secure a clear path to forming a government. Plus, Top US consultancies are struggling to attract business in China as Beijing’s national security raids scare away local clients.

Mentioned in this podcast:

Credit Suisse fined $388mn over Archegos collapse

Spain faces uncertain political future after election deadlock

Work dries up for US consultancies in China after national security raids

LVMH becomes late addition to running order of Paris Olympic sponsors

The FT News Briefing is produced by Fiona Symon, Sonja Hutson and Marc Filippino. Additional help from Monica Lopez, Peter Barber, Michael Lello, David da Silva and Gavin Kallmann. Topher Forhecz is the FT’s executive producer. The FT’s global head of audio is Cheryl Brumley. The show’s theme song is by Metaphor Music. 

Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A crackdown on password sharing helped Netflix add nearly 6mn subscribers, UK inflation fell to a 15-month low of 7.9 per cent in June, Ukraine’s armed forces are having a hard time with Russian mines and Spain’s Sunday election could mean the end of Pedro Sánchez’s time as prime minister. 

Mentioned in this podcast:

Netflix’s password-sharing crackdown pays off with nearly 6mn new subscribers

UK inflation falls more than expected to 7.9% in June

Could the UK inflation crisis be at a turning point?

Military briefing: the mines stalling Ukraine’s advance

‘Spain first’: Vox party on brink of sharing power

Rachman Review podcast: Spain's lurch to the right

The FT News Briefing is produced by Fiona Symon, Sonja Hutson and Marc Filippino. Additional help from Monica Lopez, Katie McMurran, Peter Barber, Michael Lello, David da Silva and Gavin Kallmann. Topher Forhecz is the FT’s executive producer. The FT’s global head of audio is Cheryl Brumley. The show’s theme song is by Metaphor Music. 

Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The wave of scandals that would engulf Spain began with a police raid on a wooded property outside Madrid. It was Nov. 3, 2017, and the target was José Manuel Villarejo Pérez, a former government spy. Villarejo’s name had been circulating in the Spanish press for years. He was rumored to have had powerful friends and to have kept dirt on them all. The impressive variety of allegations against him — forgery, bribery, extortion, influence peddling — had earned him the nickname “king of the sewers.”

For many decades, Villarejo’s face had been known to almost no one. He was, after all, a spy — and not just any spy, but one who had started his career in the secret police of the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco. In those years, he would dress in overalls from Telefónica, the national telephone company, as he conducted surveillance operations in the mountains, and on several occasions he even wore a priest’s collar in order to infiltrate the Basque separatist group ETA. More recently, Villarejo had taken to simply introducing himself as a lawyer who ran a private-investigation firm, offering those he met to dig up compromising material on their enemies. His formal connection to the government was increasingly ambiguous. Of all of the identities he assumed over the years, this was perhaps the most powerful one. It made him rich through the hefty fees he charged, and it opened a door into the worlds of business tycoons, government ministers, aristocrats, judges, newspaper editors and arms traffickers — all of whose trust he gained, all of whose private words he taped.

Villarejo was handcuffed and taken to Madrid. But as he sat in jail awaiting trial, the question left hanging over Spain was this: What happens to a country’s secrets when they have all been recorded by one man? And what happens when that man finds himself suddenly backed into a corner?

This story was recorded by Audm. To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.