Rodrigo Rato has once again sat in the dock. After the conviction for the black cards and the acquittal in the Bankia case, he faces his third trial for his fortune abroad. He faces 70 years in prison for various tax crimes and money laundering, among others.
For more than three hours, his lawyer tried to dismantle the origin of the case, arguing that it is full of irregularities and illegalities, and accusing the judge, the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office and above all the Treasury of creating a general case against the former vice president of the government, former minister of Economy, former president of Bankia and former managing director of the IMF, Rodrigo Rato.
The lawyer sought to convince the court of the Provincial Court of Madrid that the origin of the case was a risk report from the National Anti-Fraud Office (ONIF) prepared with an absolute "lack of rigor" and even so it served to create a “mendacious” complaint by the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office.
For the lawyer, the obtaining of all evidence against Rato should be annulled because the searches ordered by the judge were full of irregularities. “The text of the Prosecutor's Office itself says one thing and the opposite,” indicated the defense.
Rato's entourage suspects that behind the case opened after its tax regularization was the extended hand of the Treasury, at that time directed by Minister Cristóbal Montoro. In fact, the lawyer requested the statement of the Minister of Justice, Rafael Catalá, who was with Mariano Rajoy's government. The Court had already rejected his statement as a witness; However, after learning of the investigation opened in a court in Tarragona linked to the spurious use of the Treasury, Rato believes that Catalá's testimony is now “relevant.” The reason is that he made public statements about Rato's tax regularization when, in his opinion, they were private data that only the Tax Agency should have.
The Prosecutor's Office requests a prison sentence for Rato that amounts to 70 years for 11 crimes against the Public Treasury, one crime of money laundering, another of punishable insolvency, another of corruption in business, and another continued crime of falsifying a document. official and commercial in the framework of the case regarding the alleged illicit increase of his assets.
According to the indictment, Rato had maintained assets hidden from the Public Treasury since 1999 through various companies with which he had carried out continuous financial investment activities through bank accounts in the Bahamas, Switzerland, Monaco, Luxembourg and the United Kingdom. among other places.
The analysis of the seized documentation, the Prosecutor's Office pointed out, made it possible to identify unjustified capital increases between 2005 and 2015 for a total amount of 15.6 million euros, in addition to income from movable capital abroad that was also not declared to the Treasury. The experts have concluded that fees amounting to 7.4 million euros were defrauded. The Prosecutor's Office also recalled that Rato took advantage of the tax amnesty in November 2012.
