Morgan WilliamsAlso, I have yet to meet someone who would have preferred to be given or accepted this “aid” than to remain open and continue with business as usual. I understand that part of the deal was to agree to not sack their staff but to furlough them Instead. Maybe some people and businesses profited from this, but I am pretty sure that most of them didn’t. By the way, how did you manage to cope without requesting or requiring an aid package to help pay for the dozens of members of staff that you have led us to believe you have ?

It would depend on what you mean by “government”. The here today, gone tomorrow politicians or the job for life bureaucrats implementing and controlling their wishes ?. It would be interesting to know which cases expire due to a supposed lack of diligence by some faceless office worker, whose salary won’t be affected in the slightest if certain people fail to meet the deadline. It surprises me that you, having lived on Mallorca far longer than I have, have so much faith in the “system”.

You're fishing, Richard. The fact remains, that this is about businesses defrauding the government, not the other way around. I suspect you would have done the same if you had the opportunity, but ironically would blame it on "corruption". "Wasn't me, it was them". Of course.

Morgan WilliamsLook at this way. How many foreign owned businesses received this financial aid compared to locally owned ones. And what percentage of foreign owned ones were turned down compared to locally owned ones? And when I say foreign owned ones I mean not only privately owned ones but also SL companies with a foreigner as the principal administrator. Depending on the results, one could probably asertain that government corruption did occur.

Erm, to his appears to be corruption on the part of businesses - illicitly taking taking aid payments from the government. You can argue that the government should have better vetted these applications, but I'm not seeing how government corruption was involved.

Everybody who is surprised by this report, please raise your hand. Hmmm. Nobody? They (the Mallorca politicians) were just maintaining there old tradition of blaitent corruption. So what's new. They still owe me money.

WildwoodNot shocked but expected as the government couldn't organise a £$%^ up in a brewery.

Wasn’t only in Spain. USA had massive fraud as well via PPP loans. A lot of people took this money and invested it in hard assets, like real estate. Don’t trust the government to allocate money properly.

BerlingoUnlike the UK where politicians were giving multi million pound contracts to their mates.

Wow! And of course no MPs scammed the UK government out of millions on PPE contracts.