Former Minister Montoro and his team are accused of using the Treasury to traffic in laws.

MadridA judge in Tarragona has charged former PP minister and former Treasury Secretary Cristóbal Montoro and his former team with allegedly leading an "organization" from within the ministry to traffic in the modification of laws and regulations in exchange for financial gain. In total, the plot involves 28 people and six companies, to which the investigating judge accuses seven crimes: bribery, fraud against the public administration, malfeasance, influence peddling, prohibited negotiations, corruption in business, and document falsification.

In a ruling issued this Wednesday by The Vanguard According to information obtained by ARA, the head of Tarragona's investigating court number 2, Rubén Rus Vela, who has been investigating the case for seven years, has agreed to notify Montoro and members of his team at the Ministry of Finance, which he led from 2011 to 2000, and 2004 when José María Aznar led the case. The investigation had been kept secret until now.

This judicial move comes amid the PP's offensive against the PSOE over the alleged corruption case involving Pedro Sánchez's party. The Socialists were quick to counterattack, citing this investigation and also recalling the conviction of another former Popular Party finance minister, Rodrigo Rato, who was imprisoned for several tax offenses committed during his time as chairman of Bankia. "The two finance ministers from the Popular Party have ended up indicted. And if they had brought three, well, there would have been three," the PSOE said in a message to X, after the PP had reproached them for the same thing with the former PSOE organizational secretaries. In that case, José Luis Ábalos and Santos Cerdán.

"And then someone, who has a holiday photo with a drug trafficker, calls the rest of them mafia. This is the PP. A genius and a figure," the PSOE wrote to X. In Sánchez's responses to Alberto Núñez Feijóo in their face-to-face encounters in Congress, the Spanish Prime Minister had already used the corruption argument in previous stages. Sánchez had even warned that the PP's return in the summer would be complicated, as sentences against former PP leaders from the Gürtel, Púnica, and Kitchen networks are expected to be made public. In Génova, they have remained silent for the moment regarding the investigation against Montoro, who attended the PP congress two weekends ago.

An "organization" for profit

"The investigation reveals the existence of an organization in which many of those involved were high-ranking officials within the government and the central administration, from where they would have been creating a network of influence with the ultimate goal of obtaining economic profit," says the order, which speaks specifically of gas companies that would have tried to achieve legislative reforms without the organization." The judge is investigating both former officials of the Spanish government and the private firm that Montoro set up in 2006.

On the one hand, the judge includes in the plot the main leaders of the law firm Equipo Económico de Montoro (now called Global Afteli). They are Ricardo Martínez Rico, Manuel Vicente Tutor, Salvador Mariano Ruiz Gallud and Francisco de Asis Piedras. Among the former officials also charged are the former Secretary of State, Miguel Ferré; the former Undersecretary of State for Budgets and Expenditures, Pilar Platero; the former Director General of Taxes, Diego Martín-Abril; his successor in the post, José Alberto García; the former Deputy Director General of Local Taxes, Óscar del Amo; the former advisor to the cabinet of Minister Rogelio Menéndez; the former director of the cabinet of the Secretary of State for the Treasury, José María Buenaventura; and the former director general of the Tax Agency, Santiago Menéndez.

The resolution exposes how a mechanism was implemented within the structure of the Spanish government governed by the PP to traffic in laws "that benefited the economic interests" of companies "to the detriment of the public sector." The companies obtained these legislative modifications related to the Treasury in exchange for "significant payments," and those responsible for obtaining them did so with an "alleged abuse of public office." "It has been established that [Montoro] appointed among his senior officials people closely linked to the office [Economic Team], which would ensure that the preparation and processing of the texts of the draft laws and draft regulations were drafted at the request of the investigated companies, after they "They will pay for it," says the judge.

From gas companies alone, Equipo Económico invoiced, according to its records cited by the judge, 779,705 euros. The firm, which has categorically denied having participated in any scheme, did not even prepare technical reports to submit to the Ministry of Finance and the payment "covered up a commission for the exercise of its influence and thus achieved legislative reform in its favor." Among those investigated are the companies and main managers of Air Liquide, Abelló, Messer, Praxair, Sociedad Española de Carburos Metálicos and the gas association AFGIM.

Seven years of investigation

The case against Montoro was opened in 2018. It began with the accidental discovery of emails from 2013 in the records of a gas company. In 2019, a Madrid court that had filed a complaint for prevarication, embezzlement, influence peddling, and falsification of commercial documents against members of Montoro's firm was dismissed. That the suspicions against Montoro's firm date back years has been corroborated by the journalist from theAbc Javier Chicote, who in a message to X, reported having been persecuted for "exposing the business" of Equip Econòmic. "The Treasury even investigated my daughter, who was three years old," he explained.