The Mossos d'Esquadra were the ones who raided the team of former Finance Minister Cristóbal Montoro after finding suspicious emails from the office he had founded, Equipo Económico. An exchange of e-mails that hinted at a power of influence at the core of the ministry alerted the agents, who immediately contacted the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office.
That find was made in 2017. It was a kind of carambola. The origin of the chain of coincidences that the Mossos have been able to spin is a search of the Morell Town Hall (Tarragona) in 2016. There, the agents of the Criminal Investigation Commission were behind the granting of suspicious planning licenses.
But among all the confiscated documentation, the suspicion appeared that the companies Messer Ibérica and Carburos Metálicos SA allegedly fraudulently shared an electric meter for both. Since they presented themselves as a single company, they had a cheaper energy rate than the competition. With these indications, the Mossos searched Messer Ibérica's headquarters a year later, on November 6, 2017.
It was there that the "accidental discovery" was made, as recorded in an interlocutory of the Provincial Court of Tarragona, of some suspicious emails from 2013 that would serve to open a new piece that remains secret . It is in this piece that investigates the plot "whose purpose would be none other than to intervene and influence legislative reforms favorable to the gas companies included in the Association of Manufacturers of Industrial and Medicinal Gases (AGGIM) . Messer Ibérica, as stated on the AGGIM website, is part of the association.
That search at the companies' headquarters led to the intervention of the e-mails of their top representatives, who three years later ended up being arrested in an operation against electricity fraud.
Despite this, the agents, who at that time were led by the intendant Toni Rodríguez – now purged by the current Ministry of the Interior – paid attention to an exchange of emails with Equipo Económico. The focus of the emails was an attempt by the companies to have the office intervene directly in the Treasury to modify a law that would lower a tax that affected their profits.
At the time of the discovery, it had just been announced that a complaint had been filed against this same office, formerly called Montoro Asociados, for the allegedly irregular awarding of a contract with the Madrid Chamber of Commerce in 2012. Among the defendants was a brother of the ex-minister, Ricardo, and the ex-president of the Superior Council of Chambers, Manuel Teruel. That affair ended in court number 22 in Madrid, which after doing some research chose to file the case.
The facts detected by the Mossos hinted at a modus operandi similar to that reflected in the first complaint of the Prosecutor's Office. The first task was to be able to distinguish the fine line between the work of lobbyists and influence peddling.
Those emails served to pull the thread of an anonymous complaint submitted months earlier but which was deadlocked. This same investigative team had an anonymous complaint dated March 24, 2017, in which they were alerted to the alleged influence at the top of the Treasury by companies that had previously paid Equipo Económico. At that time, Anticorruption launched an investigation with the Mossos and the Civil Guard, which materialized in a complaint and the opening of proceedings in the court of inquiry 2 of Tarragona, which was the one that had initiated the investigation in the City Council of Morel
The matter has been under judicial review since 2018. According to several interlocutory hearings of the Provincial Court of Tarragona, the instructor maintains the secret of the summary with the criteria against the Anticorruption Prosecutor's Office, since he still has pending proceedings to practice.
Likewise, these resolutions also show that the judge wanted to go beyond prosecutor Carmen García Cerdá, despite the fact that she was the one who initiated the investigation. This is demonstrated in the appeal that he filed against the magistrate's decision to intercept the communications of some of the investigators of the case linked to Equipo Económico.
In this case, the Court ruled in favor of the Prosecutor's Office because it considered that the evidence contained in the case did not have enough weight to carry out wiretaps. However, as La Vanguardia has learned, there is a disparity of judgment between the prosecutor of the case and the chief prosecutor of Anticorruption, Alejando Luzón, who is betting on a contention of part of the case.
