The former defense minister in the Government of José María Aznar and president of the everis group, Eduardo Serra, used an instrumental society – Eduardo Serra and Associates SL- to channel the remuneration obtained from their participation in the boards of the aforementioned company and others such as Zeltia, now Pharma Mar and Deutsche Bank, managing to pay less to the Treasury with this ruse. This is how they accredit it two sentences of the National Court of February and May of this year.
In the aforementioned judgments it is stated that the tax investigation that was carried out regarding their income reveals “overwhelmingly” the use as instruments of the aforementioned society property of the former Minister of Defence, at least as regards the Taxation of Corporation Tax and Personal Income Tax that endorses the infractions detected by the tax authorities regarding the fiscal years 2011, 2012 and 2013.
Arms sales to the Emirates and Saudi Arabia
It so happens that Everis, the Spanish subsidiary of the Japanese telecommunications giant NTT Data, is one of the companies included in the journalistic investigation that is being published The Spanish Newspaper with the aim of shedding light on the back room of the Spanish arms industry. This investigation is uncovering “irregularities & rdquor; and “potentially suspicious transfers & rdquor; in contracts of sale of arms to United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, thanks to the documentation that was delivered in different courts in charge of resolving a labor conflict between Everis and some of its recently fired executives.
But it turns out that the former defense minister Serra, also president of Everis –company to which he has been linked since 2005– was also being investigated by fraud to the Tax agency, as evidenced by the rulings issued by the National Court. That “fraud” amounts to. a total of €1,161,318 – 336,905 in relation to Corporation Tax and 824,413.08 euros for the tax on the income of natural persons, for which reason the treasury was no longer collected in the three years indicated.
The former minister filed an appeal for not agreeing with the alert given by the Treasury. However, in the two aforementioned judgments, two different sections of the Contentious-Administrative Chamber of the National Court they reject Serra’s appeals and endorse the infractions detected by the tax authorities, although the part related to the services that the consultant provided for the Prasa group is partially estimated.
The first of the resolutions is from last February 23, and in it appealed before the Second Section of the National Court the settlement agreement issued in July 2006 by the Madrid Treasury Inspectorate for Corporate Tax for the years 2011, 2012 and 2013. Serra’s company had been inspected after verifying the Tax Agency that se had produced a decrease in the general tax baseto the be valued at market prices the professional services that the ex-minister provided to the consulting company with the same name and that it was billing third parties for financial and accounting services. According to the Treasury, whoever headed Defense with Aznar should have billed more for these services to his clients, including Everis.
He charged for his person
The sentence to which this newspaper has had access indicates that, despite the allegations made by the ex-minister, Serra’s appointment as a director at Everis and the other two companies in which he was paid to attend boards was due to his person. That is to say, “all these entities have called him because he is Eduardo Serra and for this he is paid on the board of directors,” according to the magistrates of the National Court.
For this reason, adds the National High Court, the reasons on which the settlement agreements are based, and which the contested resolution endorses, have not been distorted in this appeal, to sustain the aforementioned “very personal nature” of the services provided by Serra as director from other companies. Thus, they consider that in this case Serra’s conduct entailed violating his obligation to document related party transactions.
In the second case, regarding personal income tax for those same years, the former minister appealed a resolution of the Central Economic Administrative Court of October 15, 2018 relating to the tax for the years 2011, 2012 and 2013, amounting to 824,413.08 euros.
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In this resolution, issued by the Fourth Section of the Hearing, it is expressly stated that the issue to be resolved involves determining whether what is happening is that the former minister used the company ‘Eduardo Serra y Asociados’, as a instrumental society, for ease taxation part of the Income that he obtains from his professional activity.
The ruling analyzes certain personal expenses of the ex-minister, “some of which are not tax deductible” as well as if your company is a true consulting company. At this point, it concludes that “the facts that appear in the file show overwhelmingly” that ‘Eduardo Serra y Asociados S.L’. “is an instrumental company” that Serra uses “to mitigate the taxation of part of the income he obtains and to transfer certain expenses, some of which are not fiscally deductible”.