Vox’s spokesman in Congress, Iván Espinosa de los Monteros, today threatened to sue elDiario.es for publishing that the Tax Agency detected that he and his wife, Rocío Monasterio – a party candidate for the Community of Madrid – declared a “simulated” work worth 169,400 euros through a “false invoice” to defraud taxes. Espinosa de los Monteros threatens to go to court: “I give you 24 hours to rectify.” Monasterio, for her part, has said that elDiario.es is “a pamphlet” of “lefties, communists who attack those who tell the truth.”
Rocío Monasterio denies the Treasury and assures that she did not issue a false invoice: “I generated a 25 million operation”
Further
In the information published by elDiario.es, it is detailed that the Vox spokesman paid 625,000 euros for mediating the sale of a luxury building in the center of Madrid. Espinosa de los Monteros allegedly hired his wife’s architectural firm to carry out a study on the possibilities of the building. Despite billing it and including it in her statements and those of her companies, the work of Rocío Monasterio y Asociados (RMA) was “a simulation”, that is, it was never carried out, as verified by the Tax Agency.
The non-existent job and the false invoice were not the only irregularities that the inspectors found. Iván Espinosa de los Monteros invoiced the real estate mediation through two companies that belonged almost entirely to him when, according to the Treasury, he had to do it as a natural person. Due to the ruse, the Tax Agency concluded that the spokesman for the extreme right in Congress had to pay the Treasury 293,381.57 euros, distributed among 268,676.79 that he had stopped paying plus 24,704.78 in late-payment interest.
Neither Espinosa de los Monteros nor his team responded to elDiario.es throughout Tuesday, when this outlet contacted them to ask for their version of what happened. However, Espinosa de los Monteros did last night a thread on Twitter in which he gives 24 hours to rectify or file a complaint against this medium.
In addition, he has subsequently accused elDiario.es of having modified his information: it is not true, what this medium did is include his version, the one he had posted on Twitter, the same one that was requested by phone and he did not want to give.
Thus, in the news it has been added that Espinosa de los Monteros was sanctioned with 268,676.79, plus interest, and that the Vox spokesman paid that amount two years after being warned by the Treasury. In the thread he clarifies that he has appealed to the courts, something that the news already had: between the Fourth and Fifth sections of the Contentious-Administrative Chamber of the Superior Court of Justice of Madrid the four open ordinary processes are distributed.
In the thread and in the successive tweets, Espinosa de los Monteros assures that they followed the usual procedures and that they have now appealed to the courts against what they consider “a series of arbitrariness of the Treasury.”
elDiario.es ratifies all aspects of the information published. As on all occasions, this medium contacted the person referred to by the information to give him the opportunity to include his version and clarify the aspects he considered appropriate. Although we did not receive a response, we immediately included Espinosa de los Monteros’s version when he posted it on Twitter just after elDiario.es released the information about him.
Monasterio, for its part, denied this Wednesday having prepared a “false invoice” in statements to journalists, contrary to what the Treasury concluded: “That invoice is issued because a job is done and I invoice my husband, and I billed him little for the work I did.”
The Vox candidate in the Community of Madrid has attributed the information from elDiario.es, which includes the conclusions of the Treasury, to ideological issues. “It does not surprise me at all that a pamphlet like this guy from elDiario attacks us; It is okay that they attack us because he means that they are afraid of us ”, Monasterio launched before the present media. “They are left-handed, communists, and they love to attack those who speak the truth,” added the Vox candidate.