The investigation opened into the environment of the former Minister of Finance Cristóbal Montoro has uncovered a transfer of appointments in senior management positions of the ministry and the Tax Agency. The office that Montoro founded has served to land his former positions in the public administration, from where they would continue to maintain relations and contact with the Administration, according to the investigation.
The investigating court number two of Tarragona has had investigation proceedings open since 2018 into the possible use of influence peddling between the office that Montoro founded and the Ministry of Finance when he directed it. What the magistrate is trying to find out, with the support of the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office, the Mossos d'Esquadra and the Civil Guard, is whether the Economic Team office used its relationships with the top officials of the ministry to achieve legislative reforms in favor of its clients and in exchange for “hidden commissions”.
The main partners of the firm are Martínez Rico, as executive president, and Salvador Ruiz Gallud and Manuel Vicente-Tutor, as managing partners. All of them have held positions in the Treasury and the Tax Agency and then landed in the Economic Team.
The first of them held the positions of director of the cabinet of the Secretary of State for the Economy and, in 2000, that of director of Montoro's cabinet during the government of José María Aznar. From there they continued together as Secretary of State for Budgets and Expenditures, where he remained until 2004, when the PSOE won the general elections with José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero.
Two years later, together with Montoro, now all out of the Executive due to the change of president, he founded the firm Montoro y Asociados, which two years later was renamed Equipo Economico (EE), at which time Martínez Rico was named president. Since 2015, the registered name is Global Afteli, although it continues to operate as the Economic Team. Precisely, a few months earlier it had been published in the media that the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office was investigating a contract awarded to this office by the Spanish Chamber of Commerce three years earlier, in 2012. That matter ended with a lawsuit the Prosecutor's Office in 2017 that was presented in the Madrid courts. Among the defendants in that matter, which ended up being filed, were Ricardo Montoro, brother of the former minister, Martínez Rico, Vicente-Tutor and Salvador Ruiz.
These last two, before becoming partners of the firm, also held senior positions in the Administration. Ruiz, before landing at Equipo Economico in 2006, became general director of the State Tax Administration Agency (AEAT), between 2001 and 2004, with Montoro then being the head of the Treasury.
In the case of Vicente-Tutor, in addition to being a Tax Inspector on leave, he was Director of the Cabinet of the Director General of the Tax Agency in the second term of José María Aznar. His boss then was Martín Gallud. From the Tax Agency they went to the office. They stayed in the company, although Montoro returned to the Government with Mariano Rajoy when he came to power in 2011.
The contracts that are under judicial scrutiny start a year after his previous partner returned to be the head of the Treasury. From the investigation it is clear that EE would have been a kind of branch of the ministry itself. The companies would know this, and if they needed favorable treatment from the Treasury, that was the door to knock on, always according to police and judicial investigations.
Legal sources explain that the key to this case is knowing whether the Equipo Economico law firm engaged in influence peddling or simply acted as a lobby within a market in which revolving doors are common.
For now, what is known is that certain companies, specifically the gas companies included in the Association of Industrial and Medicinal Gas Manufacturers (AGGIM), would have paid a cost well above the market for certain reports prepared by the EE. the payment of “hidden commissions” to influence the Ministry of Finance at the highest level.
