Justice keeps open a investigation declared secret since 2018 in relation to the activity of the Economic Team office, founded in 2006 by whoever was up to two times Minister of Finance with the PP, Cristóbal Montoro, for up to one dozen alleged corruption crimes. According to the specialized Prosecutor’s Office, those responsible for the entity would have committed them for the benefit of their clients, by using their “influences” among “senior officials and officials of the Ministry of Finance”, of which they would have previously been part, occupying positions of responsibility.
What is being investigated in the case against Equipo Economico, the office founded by former Minister Montoro?
The case against the Economic team —the second one that opens against the officeafter the investigation dismissed in 2019 by a Madrid court–, is instructed by the head of the Court of Instruction number 2 of Tarragona, Rubén Rus Vela, which has kept its investigations secret since 2018. According to the judicial documentation to which this newspaper has had access, the people who direct the Economic Team would be part of a plot or organization aimed at “intervening and decisively influencing favorable legislative reforms“, firstly for some gas companies included in the Association of Industrial and Medicinal Gas Manufacturers (AGGIM).
However, the documentation seized in the course of the investigation makes investigators suspect that the allegedly criminal activity could have been repeated in the case of other clients of the office or people designated by those responsible for it, and the investigation is at the expense of all that information being analyzed.
What relationship does the former twice Minister of Finance have with the Economic Team?
Economic Team (EE), formerly Montoro Asociados and since 2016 Global Afteli (GA), was founded by Montoro in 2006. On the occasion of the investigation initiated in 2017 by a Madrid judge, which linked the firm to irregular contracts with the chambers of commerce, the then head of Treasury with Mariano Rajoy defended that had separated from the entity two years after its launch, in 2008. Among those investigated in the case opened in Madrid was his brother Ricardo, who served as advisor to the office, and the three current officials, who are now still under the scrutiny of justice.
Who is being investigated and for what crimes?
Since December 2021, there has been an investigation open to executive president of the company, Ricardo Martínez Rico, and against the managing partners of the firm Manuel de Vicente-Tutor and Salvador Ruiz Gallud, who directed the Tax Agency between 2001 and 2004. The first two were senior officials of the Ministry of Finance, as confirmed by the company’s own website. Vicente-Tutor worked for 13 years in the Treasury and became part of the Steering Committee of said institution, while Martínez Rico was director of Minister Montoro’s cabinet and in 2003 he assumed the position of Secretary of State for Budgets and Expenses.
The case against them was formulated as a result of the accidental discovery of some emails from 2013 in the records of a gas company, to which was added a anonymous complaint that pointed to up to 12 crimes: bribery, fraud against the public administration, prevarication, influence peddling, prohibited negotiations, embezzlement, against the public treasury, money laundering, corruption in business, falsification of documents, against free competition and membership in a criminal organization, although It will be the investigation that, at its conclusion, will be responsible for establishing a legal classification of the facts, to which the revelation of secrets could be added, according to the sources consulted by this newspaper.
Why is the case paralyzed?
The investigations have encountered obstacles in the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office itself. The prosecutor leading the investigations, Carmen García Cerdáresorted to an unusual mechanism, the application of article 27 of the Tax Statute, to show its discrepancy with orders received from your bossthe head of Anti-Corruption, Alejandro Luzón, that he was not in favor of carrying out further proceedings in relation to the documents attached to the emails that had appeared in the case. By alleging this precept, he forced the holding of a Meeting of Prosecutors to try to add support to his position.
However, at the meeting held on September 26, Luzon obtained the support of 19 colleagues, while 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.
Do the investigations affect more matters arising from the firm’s activity?
After intervening the computers of Messer Ibérica de Gases, in a search carried out at its headquarters in Vila-Seca (Tarragona), the investigators found emails that made them suspect that the modus operandi of the office to achieve influences in the Administration that benefited its clients went beyond gas producers.
In fact, and in response to an appeal from the Prosecutor’s Office aimed at lifting the secrecy of the proceedings, the Tarragona Provincial Court itself reported on the “extreme complexity” that presents the cause and “huge and complex material seized” at the end of 2021, to announce the high probability that the instruction will become “origin of multiple investigations derived“.
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The fact is that investigators have had access to numerous emails exchanged between senior officials of the Tax Agency, coinciding with the stage in which Montoro was in charge of the Treasury, in which reference was made to the tax situation of different people, some of them of public relevance, according to the different research sources consulted and documents to which this editorial team has had access. In their case, not so much to benefit them as in the case of gas companies, but rather to harm them.
One of the emails, from September 2017, refers to the inspection that senior Treasury officials carried out on a journalist, who had reported on different occasions about a complaint that Anti-Corruption had filed in April 2017 against the directors of Equipo Economico.