This Wednesday morning, the Community of Madrid sent several media outlets a message that has raised multiple questions: the Tax Agency will return 552,000 euros to businessman Alberto González Amador, the partner of the regional president, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, who has been reported by the Prosecutor’s Office for having allegedly committed two crimes of tax fraud (which amounted to 350,951 euros) and one of forgery in a commercial document. He will testify as under investigation on May 20 in a court in the capital. The message from the president’s team did not clarify the reason for this reinstatement nor did it provide evidence. The regional leader’s entourage has also not responded to questions from this newspaper to understand her argument, and clarify unexplained aspects, nor to the request to access the documentation that would support her thesis. He has simply limited himself to stating that the information on ABC, which advanced that information, was “correct.” Hours after this confusion arose, the general secretary of the PP of Madrid, Alfonso Serrano, implied that the refund corresponded to an amount that the businessman paid voluntarily during the 18-month Treasury inspection in the hope of regularizing his situation. tax and avoid criminal charges.
Tax experts consulted state that with so little information it is difficult to understand the cause of the refund, but they explain that these refunds are intermediate steps that can occur during an investigation and do not exclude that there is a tax crime or that the overall result for the investigated party ends up being positive. . Legal sources explain that the amount recognized by the Treasury is not delivered until the end of the procedure, if a balance is produced in favor of the taxpayer.
Serrano made his statements in the afternoon on the program Everything is a lie of four. He tried to promote the idea that the Tax Agency could have reached an agreement before going to the Prosecutor’s Office and thus shelve the matter, but article 252 of the General Tax Law prohibits those investigated from voluntarily regularizing their debts after having received a notification. of the Treasury, as happened in this case.
“What apparently came out today [por este miércoles]”, said Serrano, the general secretary of the popular Madrid party and number two of President Ayuso, “is that the Tax Agency, once analyzed the file, as he had already paid to try to regularize the situation and, unlike In other cases, instead of taking the Treasury and saying: hey, let’s fix it and sit down, what the Treasury does is take it to the Prosecutor’s Office. So what happened today is that the Tax Agency has informed the Treasury to proceed with the payment of the refund. That is to say, listen, I had paid to try to regularize my situation an amount that apparently was higher than what I really owed them.”
That notification from the Treasury was received by González Amador on May 12, 2022. The investigation began regarding the 2020 Corporate Tax and months later it was extended to 2021. They discovered that the businessman had tried to pay less in both years, deducting high expenses fictitious invoices that he wanted to justify with false invoices, including one for 620,000 euros to a Mexican company and another for 895,000 euros to another company in the Ivory Coast. In July 2023, while the inspectors continued their investigations, the previous year’s corporate tax campaign was opened. Then, González Amador included the expenses that he had improperly deducted in the two previous years and argued before the inspectors that in this way he “had not caused any damage to the public treasury in global terms.”
The inspectors reproached him for having resorted to this technique: “The taxpayer did so once the Inspection came to examine the veracity of what was declared,” says the Treasury file. “This Inspection never ceases to surprise the way in which the taxpayer has attempted to regularize the situation of, only, these two expenses, through the Corporate Tax for the year 2022, when it is an expense deducted in the 2020 declaration and another in 2021″.
What affects the most is what happens closest. So you don’t miss anything, subscribe.
Subscribe
At the end of this Wednesday, The world published information that confirmed what Serrano had said: González Amador paid 629,408 euros in fiscal year 2022 even though he was only required to pay 77,156 euros. The difference between those two amounts is what the Treasury now owes you: 552,261 euros.
González Amador tried to regularize his tax situation to avoid a scandal: in his complaint for revealing secrets against the Prosecutor’s Office, González Amador maintained through his legal representation that he had offered a criminal compliance agreement to mitigate a hypothetical punishment “for the romantic relationship that maintains [con Ayuso] and its potential distorting effect on procedural guarantees.”
Image campaign
Serrano’s intervention in Cuatro was part of a communication offensive by Ayuso’s team to try to restore his image after this controversy broke out on March 12 of this year, when elDiario.es revealed that the Prosecutor’s Office had denounced his partner . “The question here, what is it? That when you try to reach an agreement with the Treasury or the Prosecutor’s Office, what they force you to do is recognize the facts in order to reach an agreement. If you don’t reach an agreement, you are not acknowledging anything. Therefore, in order to reach an agreement you say: ‘Come on, okay. I have done’. But if in the end the agreement does not satisfy me and I do not sign the agreement and I have to go to trial… that prior recognition cannot be used. What has been done here is to leak information between a lawyer and the prosecutor’s office. “This is very strong.”
According to tax experts, there can be no agreement with an investigator when the Treasury understands that a case meets the requirements of a tax crime and decides to send it to the Prosecutor’s Office. José María Mollinedo, spokesperson for the union of Gestha Treasury inspectors, says that this possible agreement corresponds to the Plaza de Castilla judge who has had the matter on her table since March 22. “If there is an agreement, there will be a vigil like the one Shakira did, in which Amador will admit the commission of the two crimes, and the sentence will adjust to the agreement in accordance, with prison sentences (less than 24 months, probably 12 ) and the cited criminal fines.”
Ayuso was deeply involved in the tax investigation that affects her partner from the beginning, on March 13, during a press conference in Leganés. There, he defended that González Amador had not committed any crime and that it was the Treasury who owed him 600,000 euros. The first statement was denied by the businessman himself, who through his lawyer acknowledged in an email sent to the Prosecutor’s Office on February 2 that he had committed two crimes of tax fraud. “Certainly, two crimes have been committed against the Public Treasury.” The second is the one that is being aired now.
“One, I didn’t lie,” Díaz Ayuso said this Wednesday during a visit to a company in Guadarrama (Madrid). “Two, I was right,” he continued. “Three, everything that is happening is due to a political hunt, as we are seeing, as the Prosecutor himself recognized yesterday, all the powers of the State are being used against an individual for a tax inspection,” he added. “What is the government doing?” he asked himself.
Government spokesperson Miguel Ángel García has expressed himself along the same lines, after another day in which the Administration has used public resources to clarify the situation of a citizen without any institutional position.
“On this issue, although I have always said, and I maintain, that it is a matter that affects an individual, and that has nothing to do with the government, this would mean, once again, that the central government, the government of Pedro Sánchez is using the State’s means to attack an individual,” he said during the press conference that each week follows the meeting of the government council. “And above all, it shows that the president has always told the truth,” he added before the PP of Madrid, which is also chaired by Díaz Ayuso, started a campaign on social networks with the hashtag #AyusohadRazón.
The message that started this offensive added that the Prosecutor’s Office could annul the trial if the agreement proposed by Ayuso’s couple is agreed, for which they would have to pay 340,000 euros. “If the Prosecutor’s Office denies the agreement, it will be for political reasons, not technical ones,” he added. “The final result of the political hunt that he has suffered is that González Amador, at the end of the day, has a positive balance of more than 200,000 euros. If the Prosecutor’s Office maintains the trial it will be by political orders.”
However, the Penal Code establishes that to reach this type of compliance, it is not enough to pay the defrauded fee and late payment interest, but also a fine “of between two and six times” that amount, which means that González Amador could be asked for up to two million euros in exchange for reducing a hypothetical punishment.
Write to the authors at [email protected]
Subscribe here to our daily newsletter about Madrid.