In the car of the Judge of Tarragona in which the former Minister of Finance of the Popular Party Cristóbal Montoro is charged and a good part of his management team in the Treasury during 2013 and 2018 is argued “the existence of an organization, in which many of the intervenings would have bound high positions in the government and the central administration, from where they would have been creating a network of influences whose ultimate goal would be obtained by an economic profit”.
It is necessary to go back to 2013 and remember the movements and changes that were launched in the Ministry of Finance and the Tax Agency by Montoro. Thus, the magistrate's arguments are better understood, which in his car accuses the former minister, the high positions of the Treasury and a series of executives of gas companies of “the possible commission of continued crimes of bribery, fraud against the public administration, prevarication, influence peddling, prohibited negotiations, corruption in business and falsehood in documents”.
On December 6, 2013, another massive celebration of the Constitution Day was lived in the Congress of Deputies. After the official commemorative acts, the ministers of Mariano Rajoy executive mixed in the hall of lost steps with dozens of journalists to comment on a tense and sour political news. Spain took place with a strong economic crisis that the Rajoy government tried to solve with cuts and policies centered on austerity. Among a corrillo of journalists who demanded answers about the dozens of cessations in his ministry, Montoro had no complexes in pointing out that the relays responded to the dome of the Tax Agency “was full of socialists.” It was the political news of the day.
Montoro is a great connoisseur of the Ministry of Finance and its ins and outs. He was a minister with José María Aznar between 2000 and 2004. On his return from the European Parliament, in 2008, he founded and presides over the economic team, which supposedly leaves when he is appointed deputy that same year. In the car that now incriminates Montoro, an economic team is the alleged link between the Ministry and the companies.
On his return as Minister of Finance in December 2011, Montoro quickly becomes a source of controversy. Four months later, he would approve a controversial fiscal amnesty, which years later would lie the Constitutional Court. Montoro knew perfectly that he needed to have a team of faithful around him. First, she would appoint Beatriz Viana as general director of the Tax Agency, who in her short journey in that position would dismiss 51 trusted positions, in addition to denying that the former PP treasurer, Luis Barcenas, welcomed the fiscal amnesty, despite the fact that Bárcenas' lawyer had admitted it.
Montoro himself would force Viana to resign the alleged error of the Treasury in sending to the Judge of the Noos case of a report in which Cristina was attributed to the sale of 13 real estate properties for 1.4 million euros. The Tax Agency said she was wrong with the Infanta DNI data, Montoro requested an unusual forgiveness and Viana was defenestrated.
As the new director of the Tax Agency, Montoro would appoint Santiago Menéndez, who continued with the purge of charges since his inauguration in June 2013. One day before the minister was sincere on Constitution Day it was learned that Menéndez had changed nine members of the Tax Agency Committee and dismissed 20 charges of free designation. One of the most controversial changes was that of Ignacio Ucelay, head of customs control of the central delegation of great taxpayers, who presented the resignation after the dismissal of an inspector who did not admit an appeal against a millionaire fine to the cemex cement.
Since the inauguration of Montoro as Minister in December 2011 to his exordium of the alleged socialist positions in 2013, in just two years, more than 300 positions were replaced in the Ministry of Finance and the Tax Agency. It is a cease more than two days.
In the judge's order, it is pointed out that the accused “in exchange for important payments, and with alleged abuse of the exercise of the public function, intervene decisively in legislative reforms, so that they develop according to the interests of their clients.” It even points out that gas companies arrived twice “to write legal texts, all through the payment of important disbursements” for the change of laws and real decrees as well as the General State Budget Law of 2018.
In one Interview at the newspaper El Paísthe then general director of the Tax Agency, Santiago Menéndez, minimized the 300 changes of charges in the Ministry of Finance of Montoro and said: “The Tax Agency is never politicized. Nor now, nor does it not even know that it has ever been,” denials. Like the former minister, Menéndez is also charged in the case opened by the Judge of Tarragona.
