“Do the episodes of rotating doors seem ethical that are continually produced around you? You have planted the door in the middle of your office!” Clay iglesias She was deputy of the PSOE for Cáceres when in 2015 he asked Cristóbal Montoro about his ability to jump from the government of José María Aznar to a private company and back to Moncloa with Mariano Rajoy. “My scale of values can be different from that of others,” replied the then Minister of Finance. A decade later, Montoro has been charged along with its closest nucleus in the office and in the ministry to create a rotating door between them that came to influence the General State Budgets to benefit companies in the gas sector.
Cristóbal Montoro was part of the group of economists who in the nineties whispered in the ear of José María Aznar until the Minister of Reference Finance of the Popular Party became. First with Aznar (2000-2004) and then with Mariano Rajoy (2011-2018), acting as a deputy and Eurodiputa during the two legislatures of the PSOE of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. It was in that interim, while representing the PP in Brussels, when he launched what was then called “Montoro and Associates.”
The PP fiscal guru gave an interview to The world In 2006 and celebrated the great influx of party positions that were going to work with him. “It's about taking advantage of the good understanding that we have among us to continue working, in this case at the service of our client companies.” I finished with a phrase between laughter: “We are not going to make influences. That is not going with me. If I had wanted to dedicate myself to that, I would not need to set up such a wide team.”
What Montoro was riding was a rotating door of high positions of the Treasury and the Tax Agency that had worked with him in the executives of José María Aznar and that would do so, some of them, with the return of the PP to La Moncloa in the stage of Mariano Rajoy. Montoro himself presided over the office until he sold his actions in 2008 and returned to Congress. The office was renamed economic team and is now under the magnifying glass of a court in case its connections with Montoro and the Rajoy government served to have several gas companies disburse 779,000 euros to the office, not counting the possible minutes. According to the summary of the case, they were not the only ones.
The list of the transfer of high positions that entered and left the Montoro office is long and some names overlap with the payroll of imputed to the judge of Tarragona. And the journey that many shows that the door did not stop turning. The documentation of the case indicates that the door, in addition to turning, led to the offices of the Ministry when it was time to negotiate legal reforms for economic team clients.
High positions, ministers and a convicted
The list of high positions begins in the Foundation of the Office in 2006. Ricardo Martínez Rico, current president of the office, was secretary of state of budgets in the last legislature of José María Aznar, two years before founding the company with Montoro. Manuel de Vicente-Tuctor, director of Economic Team, joined in 2007, a year after his creation, and until then he had been deputy general planning in the Tax Agency (1999-2001) and Chief of Cabinet of the director in this agency (2001-2004). An AEAT director who in that period was Salvador Ruiz Gallud and who today is responsible for the fiscal area of the office.
Pilar Platero was Montoro advisor with Aznar in the government, but went to the advice to be a partner until Rajoy's arrival in La Moncloa in 2011, when she returned to the Treasury hand in hand with the new minister. She was Undersecretary of Budgets until 2016 and subsequently president of the State Society of Industrial Participations (QUIET), attached to the Treasury, until the motion of censure. Francisco de Asís Piedras is the director of the office, but previously, among other positions, he was also director of Cabinet of Montoro. José María Romero, director of the Economic Area, was Montoro Advisor in Brussels, where he was destined as Eurodiputa when he opened the office.
The list covers all the levels of public administration related to taxes. High positions of the Tax Agency, the management of budgets and advisors and chiefs of cabinet. And also ministers, some past and other futures. José María Michavila, Minister of Justice with Aznar, associated with the advice although he did not put money, and Luis de Guindos, shortly before becoming the Minister of Economy of all the governments of Rajoy, also played a discreet role in the start of the office with 5% of the opening capital.
High positions that entered and left the economic team shared an office with others that later were part of the bench in the case of the 'Black' Caja Madrid cards. José Manuel Fernández Norniella was one of the founders and main shareholders of the office in his first three years of life. Before he had been Secretary of State for Finance with Rodrigo Rato and José María Aznar and his passage through the bank, spending 185,000 euros with the card, it cost him a year in jail.
The “most direct” route to Montoro
The Office of Cristóbal Montoro, from which it was disconnected in 2008 after returning to the Congress of Deputies, is one of the most concentrated examples of revolving door in Spanish politics. Also of the most exposed, which according to the judge of Tarragona was not an obstacle to the largest Spanish companies in the industrial gas sector went to economic team to search for direct line with Cristóbal Montoro and his ministry. “The most direct route, as always, is to pay this economic team that has direct contact with the Minister of Finance,” says one of the intervened emails.
Montoro himself had to refer to the matter when in 2017 the Anti -Corruption Prosecutor's Office filed a first complaint against his former office, an issue that over the years ended up filed in the courts while the second cause, which has now cost him the imputation, made his way in a court under summary secret. “While in the opposition I understood that I should not be in any consultant. That's why I sold the actions. So that no one could ever say anything”said that year in the halls of the Senate.
Now a judge investigates whether the rotating door that was born as Montoro and Associates had its telephone agenda as the main asset when the gas companies knocked on their door. Asking for help to get what I had not achieved a consultant to the Ernst & Young level: that the government lowered the fiscal bill of the sector.
In the list of accused, together with Montoro himself, there are names that made all versions of the trip. Those who were high positions before being part of the office and those who were after being in it. All with a common denominator: they were part of the narrowest circle of collaborators of Montoro. Now a judge wants to know if part of the appeal of hiring economic team resided that they had a direct line with their founder and even had the power to condition the fiscal policy of the whole country on demand of their clients.