Economic team, the office founded by the former Minister of Finance Cristóbal Montoro with other high positions of José María Aznar and that is in the epicenter of a plot of alleged corruption and influence peddling in the stage of Mariano Rajoy, charged at least 5.35 million euros of about thirty employers and lobbies between 2008 and 2019.
The figure, calculated from a report by the State Agency for Tax Administration (AEAT) included in the Summary of the 'Montoro Case', reminds the 5.2 million euros that this firm invoiced in those years agencies and companies in the hands of governments of the PP. But a game intermingles, the 1.86 million that the firm charged from Madrid Network, a non -profit business association created in 2007 to promote (with public money) business innovation in the Community of Madrid.
This entity, in which she worked as a press advisor Isabel Díaz Ayuso with a net salary of 4,219 euros per month, was promoted by the Madrid employer Ceim, the Regional Chamber of Commerce and the Government of Esperanza Aguirre, which a few weeks ago rolled up against Montoro for the filtration of her fiscal data when she aspired to the Mayor's Office of Madrid.
CEIM itself and the Chamber of Commerce are among the lobbies that most paid to economic team. In the case of CEIM, it was one of its outstanding payers in those years, with 603,474.88 euros. For its part, the Chamber of Commerce of Madrid paid another 178,298 euros to the firm founded by Montoro, Guindos and, among others, José Manuel Fernández Norniella, former high position of Aznar that in 2012 was accepted to the Fiscal Amnesty of Montoro and that presided over the Superior Council of Chambers of Commerce between 1998 and 2005.
This last entity, according to the AEAT, paid 284,482.28 euros to the firm. He did it by three ways. First, 106,200 euros were invoiced from the Council of Chambers itself, and another 37,018.73 euros, through the Cameral Institute Foundation for the creation and development of the company (INCYDE), in which NORNIELLA “has been president”, highlights the AEAT report.
Of that figure, Inyde paid 24,810 euros to economic team and another 12,208.73 euros to his successor, Global Afteli, the firm that, as Eldiario.es revealed in 2018, the partners of the firm created when it transpired that the Anti -Corruption Prosecutor's Office was investigating a contract by finger awarded, precisely by the Chambers of Commerce.
In addition, economic team invoiced another 141,263.55 euros “from 2008 to 2012” to Fundación Crea, which, highlights the AEAT, “is related” to Inca Foundation. Of these payments, 134,051.55 euros were directly and another 7,212 euros through Center for Economic Reform and Social Development SL (CREDs), acquired by Economic Team in October 2007. Fundación Crea was constituted in 2004 among others, Javier Collado, general director of the INCyDE Foundation, to, among other purposes, give “support to the creation of companies, through specialized monitoring of the entrepreneur”.
The AEAT report collects the clients of the office with operations exceeding 60,000 euros in the 2008-2019 period and details its commercial relations and those of its partners with companies, associations and public agencies, among other entities. It highlights as a client, with another 535,290 euros, the former photovoltaic business association, integrated in 2012 in the current employer of the sector, UNEF, which also paid another 90,800.8 euros to the office.
In those years, with Rajoy's energy reform as background, economic team copied headlines for the relations of its partners with two companies in the sector. The president of the firm, Ricardo Martínez Rico, was then a advisor to Abengoa and another of the partners, Manuel Vicente-Tutor, was at that time non-advisor to another of the main clients of the firm, Solaria. Vicente-Tutor's wife was placed as boss in the ONIF in Montoro as soon as he returns to the Treasury in 2012.
The energy reform of 2012 and 2013 was designed by Alberto Nadal, then Secretary of State for Energy, then in charge of Budgets with Montoro and now recovered for the economic area of Alberto Núñez Feijóo in the PP.
Another great affected by that reform was the old electric employer, Unesa. The report includes payments to economic equipment of 98,720 euros of its then president, Eduardo Montes, and another 18,150 euros of its successor, the Association of Electric Power Companies (AELEC). For its part, the Association of Companies for the Environmental Desimpact of Los Purines paid the firm 72,600 euros; and the Association of Renewable Energy Companies (APPA), another 54,450 euros.
The Guindos reform
Among the great payers of the office, with 630,020 euros, was the General Council of Official Pharmaceutical Colleges. 456,990 euros paid them to Economic Team and another 173,030 euros to Global Afteli. It should be remembered that between 2012 and 2013, the Ministry of Economy, headed by Luis de Guindos, analyzed a liberalization of the pharmacies sector included in a Law on Professional Services, which ended up discarding.
The report that the Tax Agency prepared in October 2020 at the request of the Prosecutor's Office on the economic relations of the Montoro Firm and its partners indicates that “due to the urgency urged in the preparation of the report, the transfer of the information held by the AEAT in relation to several linked societies and 3 members of the office is pending for successive: D. Cristóbal Montoro, his brother (Ricardo Montor Aznar), as well as Mr. Guindos ”.
The current vice president of the European Central Bank (ECB), which belongs to a family of pharmacists, was a partner of the Montoro firm since its creation in June 2006 (had 5%) until May 6, 2008. Until 2012, and while economy analyzed the possible liberalization of pharmacies, a brother of Guindos, Juan de Guindos, was a advisor to Cofares, the main cooperative of distribution of drugs in Spain. “Pharmacists win the battle and economy does not liberalize them,” this newspaper titled in 2013.
Sources of the General Council of Pharmaceutical Colleges indicate which economic team was one of its suppliers between 2008 and 2019. The company founded by Montoro “prepared for the General Council periodic reports of macro and microeconomic situation, as well as the health and medication spending. In the same way it developed financial and fiscal documentation with the main novelties and its direct impact on the pharmaceutical profession and the pharmacy office. This collaboration concluded in 2019 ”.
Another relevant customer's client was the Lobby G 14 real estate for excellence, which paid 524,260 euros to economic team, and was created at the end of 2007 by the largest companies in that sector then, when the brick bubble began to give symptoms of exhaustion and the sector insisted that there would be a “soft landing”. Among the founders of G 14 were, Colonial, Metrovacesa and several already missing, such as Chamartín, Martinsa-Fadesa or Reyal Urbis. The latter would then lead the list of Morable to the Public Treasury that Montoro created and was also a client of the office.
The Treasury report includes payments of 363,000 euros of the employer protagonist so far of the 'Montoro Case', the Association of Industrial and Medicinal Gases Manufacturers (AGFIM), in the focus of the investigation of a Judge of Tarragona since 2018 for the supposed favorable treatment of the Treasury to this sector thanks to the mediation of economic equipment. The researchers propose that the firm intended to collect their minute or “Success Fee” by bringing between the different members of the employer through what they call “Pitufeo.” And they mention the possibility that the treatment of favor to this employer extended in those years to other sectors and companies.
Among them, the game business, which also appears in the list of lobbies who were clients of the firm. Economic team charged, according to the AEAT, 101,640 euros of the Business Association of Game Casinos and another 11,850 euros of the Codere Foundation, additional to the 679,000 euros that paid that multinational, in which Rafael Catalá worked before and after being Minister of Justice with Rajoy.
159,224 euros paid the Spanish federation of spirits to the law firm, whose general director for years is Bosco Torremocha, son of former judge Fernando Torremocha, who for many years was an advisor to the PP in different competition agencies. Fernando Torremocha was placed by the PP as vice president of the extinct National Competition Commission (CNC) and advisor to his successor, the National Commission of Markets and Competition (CNMC). The party came to put it in its Board of Directors while it was a member of the so -called 'super -regulatory' that the popular created in 2013.
Other employers' clients of economic team, already with sums below 50,000 euros, were the National Union of Credit Cooperatives (33,050 euros), the Spanish Banking Association (AEB) and its Foundation (24,200 euros), the Spanish Confederation of Savings Banks (20,060 euros) and two entities linked to the ETTs: the association of large temporary work companies, asemployment (25,410 euros) and the foundation Randstad (10,890 euros).
With 24,080 euros, the Family Business Institute (IEF) appears. The Treasury report highlights the relations of the firm and its subds subsidiary with an IEF manager, Esteban Sastre, who charged the firm 267,707 euros between 2012 and 2016. A company that manages Sastre, Altamar analysis and investments, received another 40,535 euros of economic and global Apteli team between 2015 and 2019.
Other lobbies who paid economic team in those years were the Asebio Biotechnological Employer (18,150 euros), CEOE (17,400 euros), the Spanish Business Confederation of Pastry Craftsmen Pastry (17,400 euros), the National Business Federation Transport by Bus (Fenebús), with 14,520 euros, and Ecolec Foundation (9,801 euros), created by the employers of the employers of Manufacturers and importers of appliances for the management of waste in this sector.
