Organizations and companies in the hands of governments of the PP paid at least 5.2 million euros between 2008 and 2019 to economic team, the office founded in 2006 by former popular minister Cristóbal Montoro and wrapped in a scandal of alleged corruption and influence peddling.
The photo is incomplete, because it does not include the first two years of the consultant who created the former Minister of Finance, which Montoro supposedly abandoned in 2008 (the researchers question it), and that he created together with a good part of those accused in this case and other former high positions of Aznar, such as the later minister and current vice president of the European Central Bank (ECB), Luis de Guindos.
But those 5.2 million give an idea of the millionaire income that the signing of the former minister received and many of his collaborators during Aznar of entities of the PP orbit. The figure is calculated from a report by the State Tax Administration Agency (AEAT) included in the Summary of the ‘Montoro Case’ collected by economic team clients with operations exceeding 60,000 euros in the 2008-2019 period and details their commercial relations and those of its partners with companies, associations and public organizations, among other entities.
The document also includes the detail of the Global Afteli charges, the company to which (as Eldiario.es revealed in 2018) the economic team partners transferred their activity in 2015, after it transcends that Anticorruption was investigating the law firm for a hinge contract of the cameras of commerce, an issue other than the one that has led to the imputation of the former minister by a judge of Tarragona.
The AEAT report included in the summary, whose secret has raised this summer the judge who investigates these facts since 2018, points out as one of the main clients of the office to Red Eléctrica de España (REE), whose largest shareholder (20%) is the State and that in July, after exploding the scandal, announced the rupture of the contract he still had with economic equipment for tax advice. Ree paid the firm and its successor 2.34 million between 2018 and 2019: 1.56 million to economic team and another 778,635 euros, to Global Afteli.
The AEAT report does not require the amounts paid every year. Another report by the Mossos d’esquadra figure the payments at 1,394 million between 2010 and 2015. Then the owner of the high voltage network was presided over another figure of the Aznarismo near Montoro, the late José Folgado.
The Mossos relate these payments, on the one hand, with studies on the tax advantages that would report to Ree to have their own foundation, and on the other, with the energy reform of the Government of Mariano Rajoy as of 2012, which faced Montoro with the then Minister of Industry, José Manuel Soria, for an alleged favorable treatment of the Treasury to Abengoa, another great client of economic team, and in which he was advisor to his president, Ricardo Martínez Rico.
eldiario.es reported at the end of 2015 of the procedures to create that foundation, which did not become constituted and conceived as a vehicle to comply with folgado, then Ree executive president, and who was already 71 years old. Finally, Folgado resigned from his executive functions in 2016 and remained as president of Ree until 2018. In his stage the company became a kind of PP’s related placement agency: of former deputies and high positions to the former secretary of Alberto Nadal, architect of the energy reform as Secretary of Energy State, then in charge of Budgets with Montoro and now recovered for the economic area of Alberto Núñez.
Nadal became appointed in 2012 Ree advisor with Ignacio López del Hierro, then husband of María Dolores de Cospedal, although they resigned within a few hours of announcing their appointments by the scandal generated. Folgado, who died in 2020 by Coronavirus, was key to Montoro’s entry into the first Aznar government. At that time he was director of Economics of CEOE and Montoro directed the ‘Think Tank’ of the employer, the Institute of Economic Studies (IEE).
Until his appointment as president of Ree, Folgado was mayor of Tres Cantos, a municipality that the PP governs since 2007 and that he paid 84,544 euros to economic team between 2008 and 2019, according to the Treasury report. Part of those payments were made in 2008, with folgado as mayor.
Other Madrid municipalities governed by the PP in those years that paid the Economic team were the Madrid City Council, with 103,154 euros through the autonomous agency Tax Agency Madrid (61,364 euros) and the Consistory itself (41,790 euros); Alcalá de Henares, from the Public Business Entity Alcalá Development (21,240 euros), and Alcobendas (12,000 euros).
Among the largest clients of the economic team, the non -profit business association Madrid Network, created in 2007 to promote (with public money) business innovation in the Community of Madrid stands out. This entity was promoted together with the Madrid employer Ceim and the Regional Chamber of Commerce, the Government of Esperanza Aguirre, which a few weeks ago lashed out against Montoro for the filtration of its fiscal data when aspiring to the Mayor’s Office of Madrid.
Madrid Network paid economic teams higher than those of the vast majority of IBEX companies: 1.86 million in four payments for two contracts awarded between 2008 and 2011 without public tender, when governed by private law, for advice on R&D matters.
Madrid Network was then chaired by the historic PP Antonio Beteta, high position of Montoro before and after those orders. Secretary of State for Public Administrations from 2011 to 2016, Beteta became on the judge’s investigated list. A 2021 car of the late 2021 accused him of favoring the office founded by Montoro “through his hiring by regional organizations and entities linked to these,” expressly citing Madrid Network. The anonymous complaint that gave rise to the procedure assured that it was he who invited Ferrovial to hire economic team to achieve favorable legal changes. Beteta is not charged.
When Madrid Network awarded these contracts to economic team, in this entity the current president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, with a net salary of 4,219 euros per month. “I was almost 20 years working as an editor, because I am a journalist,” he said in Julio Ayuso, who said his government “has not signed anything” with economic team. Only since 2023, its executive has subsidized Madrid Network with 336,851.62 euros, according to the Treasury data and the Madrid community itself.
The Board of Feijóo
Among the Autonomous Communities governed by the PP that paid the Economic Team stands out in Madrid, with 342,780 euros additional to the 1.8 million paid by Madrid Network. Of that figure, 314,360 euros were paid to that mercantile and another 28,420 euros, to the center for economic reform and social development SL, which economic team acquired in October 2007.
For its part, the Xunta de Galicia de Feijóo paid for economic team another 207,638 euros: 172,838 euros directly and another 34,800 euros through the Galician Institute for Economic Promotion (IGAPE), dedicated to support the economic and business development of Galicia, especially to SMEs. According to the plural, among the orders of the Xunta to Economic Team was a report “on the issues to be valued for the creation of a Tax Agency in Galicia.”
Other public clients of economic team controlled in those years by the PP were the Port Authority of Melilla (90,678.24 euros), the excellent Diputación de Lugo (34,220 euros) and the National Institute of Aerospace Technique (INTA), with 20,880 euros. The AEAT report includes payments from the Popular Party itself to economic team for 42,120 euros. This media contacted the game to ask on what dates those payments were made and why, without obtaining an answer.
Other payments of governments of the PP to economic team in those years are those of the Government of Murcia (42,185 euros) and La Rioja (39,544.4 euros). In Murcia, they were made directly (21,181 euros) and through an agency with functions similar to Igape Gallego, the Institute of Development of the Region of Murcia (21.004 euros). In the client list also appears the Junta de Castilla y León, with another 21,240 euros.
Source: www.eldiario.es
