The Montoro case: a scandal at the heart of the Spanish Treasury

Cristóbal Montoro was the somewhat revolting Finance Minister in the Rajoy government who treated everyone condescendingly, even going so far as to threaten members of Congress from the rostrum with revealing their tax information. Montoro was also the one who audited the accounts of the Generalitat (Catalan government) in 2017. That same year, however, the newspaper Abc He had already published an investigation suggesting that the minister could have been benefiting his former law firm, now called Equipo Económico.

Following the accidental discovery of an email, in 2018 a judge in Tarragona began a thorough investigation into an operation in which a group of gas companies had allegedly obtained a significant tax reduction after paying a considerable amount of money to this firm. This Wednesday, the judge charged Montoro and the entire leadership of the ministry, including the then director of the Tax Agency, for allegedly having set up a scheme that served to charge companies in exchange for making legal modifications that benefited them. In total, 28 people and six gas companies have been charged. These companies alone allegedly paid the Equipo Económico firm, founded by Montoro in 2006, nearly €800,000 in exchange for legal changes to the tax regime that saved them many millions in taxes.

The case is particularly serious, even more so than the Koldo case, because it involves the Tax Agency. If the judge's suspicions are correct, while Montoro and his team controlled the Spanish Treasury and public accounts, they took advantage of the situation to profit by offering tax breaks to companies. It must be taken into account that a company can save a lot of money with a simple regulatory change. Therefore, it's understandable that they were willing to pay.

The investigation will now continue, and the defendants' version of events will have to be heard, exactly as with the Koldo case. But what is clear is that this information is a torpedo in the waterline of the PP's strategy to finish off Sánchez. From the outset, Feijóo has no choice but to immediately expel Montoro from the party, just as Sánchez has done with his own party. The former minister, incidentally, attended the PP congress as a guest two weeks ago. This case also taints the administration of the two former PP presidents, José María Aznar and Mariano Rajoy, since both trusted Montoro to control the Treasury.

However, the plot has a particularly unpleasant element. The newspaper's head of research AbcJavier Chicote has reported that when he published the scandal, the Treasury began inspecting him and his entire family. Obviously, this incident should also be investigated, but if confirmed, we would be facing behavior worthy of the mafia. A mafia that, incidentally, controlled the Tax Agency.

The Montoro case thus joins the Bárcenas, Gürtel, Kitchen, Operation Catalunya cases, and so many others. They all have two elements in common: the belief that the State belongs to them, that is, to the PP, and that the laws are for others, but not for them.