The head of the Investigative Court number 2 of Tarragona, Rubén Rus Vela, secretly investigates whether the members of the Economic Team (EE) office, which the former PP minister Cristóbal Montoro founded in 2006, They used their “influences” for the benefit of their clients. between “senior officials and officials of the Ministry of Finance”as specified in an order from the Provincial Court of Tarragona, to which this editorial team has had access.
The resolution also highlights that the members of the company, which was first called Montoro Asociados, later renamed the Economic Team (EE) and which since 2016 has operated as Global Afteli (GA), created a network of contacts in the Treasury thanks to that some of them had played “positions at the highest level of the Government, Central Administration and in the Autonomies”.
The order, dated January 28, 2022, refers to an investigation that began on August 2, 2018, and that remains secret and active since thenas confirmed to this newspaper by up to five legal and police sources in the case.
chance find
The cause, which in 2022 already pointed out the first “suspicions” and “conjectures”, it was opened after several emails were discovered “by chance” in another judicial procedure opened in 2017, after an anonymous complaint was filed in March of that year.
However, the messages that had been seized on November 6, 2017 during a search carried out at the company Messer Ibérica de Gases SAlocated in the town of Vila-seca (Tarragona), within an investigation for a crime against territorial planning, led Anti-Corruption to expand the case.
Influence on legislative reforms
The resolution of the Tarragona Court is based on the information provided by the Judicial Police and the actions carried out by the Civil Guard and the Mossos d’Esquadra until that date, in January 2022. The order indicates, literally: “The people and commercial entities on which the research activity is being directed […] They would be part of a plot or organization whose purpose would be no other than to intervene and decisively influence favorable legislative reforms for the gas companies included in the Association of Industrial and Medicinal Gas Manufacturers (AGGIM). To do this, they hired the services of the company Equipo Economía (EE), formerly Montoro Asociados, and since 2016, Global Afteli (GA).”.
The Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office, which is leading the investigations, pulled the string and demanded from the Ministry of Finance, the Tax Agency and the General Directorate of Taxes all the emails linked to the investigation, which has uncovered the alleged clientelistic network woven by the company founded by Montoro but from which the former Minister of Finance separated himself in 2008, as he has repeatedly stated.
On December 16, 2021, the investigating judge even agreed to intervene in the devices and means of communication used by those investigated. However, this decision was annulled by the Provincial Court of Tarragona.
Difficulty of the investigation
The investigation of the case, opened in December 2018 and still secret, has been complicated. So much so that the prosecutor at the head of the investigations, Carmen García Cerdáresorted to article 27 of the Fiscal Statute to show his disagreement with the orders received from his boss, the Head of Anti-Corruption Alejandro Luzónwho was not in favor of carrying out further proceedings in relation to the documents attached to the emails that had appeared in the case.
At the Board of Prosecutors on September 26 to which the matter was submitted, Luzón obtained the support of 19 colleagueswhile only five opted for García Cerdá, which means that the procedures that she considered necessary for the investigation to advance will not be carried out.
In between, the tug-of-war maintained between the fiscal representative and her superior has been noted in the investigations carried out by the Mossos and the UCO of the Civil Guardbodies that concluded them almost a year ago, according to the sources consulted.
Anti-Corruption Complaint
This is not the first time that the firm founded by Montoro has been under judicial scrutiny. In June 2017, Court number 22 of Madrid accepted for processing a complaint filed by Anti-Corruption – prepared by the same prosecutor assigned to the case currently in force in Barcelona – against the members of the office that had been founded eleven years earlier by who at that time moment He was, for the second time, Minister of Finance of Spain.
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The senior official has always defended that he had left the Economic Team in 2008, two years after the creation of the office. It so happens that, on the same day that a judge admitted the complaint, Montoro was disqualified in the Congress of Deputies after the 2012 special tax declaration was declared unconstitutional, better known as ‘tax amnesty‘.
In this case, which was filed two years later, in April 2019, a total of seven people were investigated – including Ricardo Montoro, a brother of the minister who served as advisor to the Economic Team – and to the consulting firm itself as a legal entity in relation to the allegedly irregular award in 2012 of a contract with the chambers of commerce. The investigation declined when no evidence was finally found to support the Anti-Corruption complaint.