On the afternoon of Wednesday, March 6, 2024, José Precedo called me and I remember his words perfectly: “I have everything.” We had talked about the issue, tried to confirm some of the clues that had reached us, looked at the registry, the accounts, etc. That day we learned that everything was tied up: businessman Alberto González Amador, partner of Isabel Díaz Ayuso, had committed tax fraud worth 350,000 euros.
On Thursday, already in the editorial office, we set up an investigation team with several journalists from different sections, as we had already done on some other occasion: Courts, Madrid, Economy, Politics… We informed them of what there was. The main thing at that time was to read, understand and translate into plain language an extensive report from the tax inspection that included all the details of the fraud operation. While the editors closed their topics for the weekend – which the newspaper comes out every day – that was my job: prepare an index of the document of more than 200 pages, think about possible approaches and raise the doubts and questions to be resolved.
On Monday, March 11, first thing in the morning, we met, distributed tasks and scheduled the first deliveries. Some journalists would prepare the main piece, others would investigate the companies that collaborated with the fraud and investigate the business that had provided González Amador with such high profits. We sent journalists to various points in Madrid to obtain additional information. It was also necessary to contact prosecutors and jurists to understand the possible consequences for González Amador, prepare montages and graphics to illustrate the news, begin to propose the side pieces and be prepared for political reactions.
A display of this caliber is only possible in a newsroom like that of elDiario.eswhere all its journalists, no matter what section they belong to, begin to collaborate with each other to get the job done. I have been lucky enough to see it on more occasions, such as when we published the investigation into Cristina Cifuentes' fake master's degree or during the Covid-19 pandemic.
On the afternoon of that Monday we already had the first information prepared: “Ayuso's couple defrauded the Treasury of 350,951 euros with a scheme of false invoices and front companies.” It was that same afternoon when we contacted both Alberto González and Miguel Ángel Rodríguez. There was debate with the headline, despite the warnings of Miguel Ángel Rodríguez: “You will see…”. The news was published early on Tuesday, March 12 with the word fraud in the headline.
In the midst of all this deployment, from the study of the enormous documentation that the team managed, another derivative emerged: the apartment in which González Amador, and therefore, Ayuso, lived.
Early on Monday we didn't even know where Ayuso resided in Madrid; In less than 24 hours we could prove that it was a 200 square meter luxury home in Chamberí that the businessman had bought after tax fraud. In between, a tip-off, consultations in the commercial registry bases that were crossed with the data from the tax report and more field work.
And then, another new clue: there was a second floor. On March 13, while the first exclusives shook Spanish politics, we were able to prove that the Madrid president and her partner were enjoying the building's penthouse, another luxury apartment. The three days of preliminary investigation served to discover a new element: this home was in the name of the company of a prosecutor who had represented González Amador during the Tax Agency investigation.
In those three frenetic days, the investigation team published the scoop on the fraud, discovered that the money came from a commission for mediating the purchase and sale of masks during the worst of the pandemic, created a map with the connections between the companies used for the false invoices, located a shell company in Panama and, in addition, uncovered that Ayuso lived in a luxury apartment bought after the fraud and in another in the name of an intermediary company.
That last news item was closed and launched just when El Mundo published the news about the Prosecutor's Office's offer of a pact, which was later proven false. We had to take this new route that night of Wednesday the 13th, which contradicted part of the documentation in our hands, and continue on Thursday.
But that did not stop us from continuing to publish exclusive information about the case. Nor did direct threats from Ayuso's Chief of Staff, Miguel Ángel Rodríguez, stop the investigation—his “we are going to crush you, you are going to have to close”—or the fact that the president herself tried to discredit our information in public.
We discovered a new company of González Amador in Florida, we discussed the role of a Quirón executive in the case, one of our editors located and spoke in a town in Seville with the businessmen who collaborated in the fraud and we delved into the failed hit of the Ayuso couple who tried to sell vaccines well above their price in the Ivory Coast. We created context pieces to help understand the complexity of the case, we followed all the reactions and recorded several podcasts with the Una tema a día team. All this in the same week.
Far from “taking a while to publish,” as the investigating magistrate Ángel Hurtado has said, the Appeals Chamber of the Supreme Court and continue to hint at some accusations in the trial against the State Attorney General, what happened those days in the writing of elDiario.es It was an exceptional journalistic work that allowed an enormous amount of exclusive information to be provided in a short space of time. If at any time the newsrooms resemble, even minimally, those American series that believe they know how to reflect the daily work of journalists, this was one of them.
None of that information has been denied. Alberto González Amador and Isabel Díaz Ayuso have never been able to recriminate elDiario.es nothing of what we published, because everything was true and verified until the slightest doubt was eliminated. Nobody could denounce us, just as those threats announced.
Miguel Ángel Rodríguez called us before the Supreme Court this week as liars, scandalous and aggressive, but he has never, ever been able to put a but to our texts. From there comes the accumulated frustration and anger that he gave vent to first in his threats against us and then in his testimony as a witness in court. He can't do anything else, he only has the insult left.
Justice has confirmed each and every one of our exclusives until leaving González Amador at the doors of the bench for that tax fraud that we uncovered on the morning of March 12, 2024. This same Friday it has endorsed his prosecution for fraud and falsification of documents.
PS: This text is not only a recognition of the journalists who directly participated in that news. Also to all those who work in elDiario.es and that, with their efforts, allow in a small environment, like ours, some colleagues to detach themselves from the suffocating current affairs to investigate while they carry out the enormous daily workload from Society, Front Page and Networks, Culture, Economy, International, Data, Design, Podcast, regional editions or from wherever. It is a pride to work here.