The judge’s decision to expand the investigation against Alberto González Amador, partner of Isabel Díaz Ayuso, leaves in the air what, until now, was the most predictable outcome of the case: an agreement with the Prosecutor’s Office and with the Treasury to recognize his fraud prosecutor, pay half a million euros and avoid going to jail. The new separate piece does not intersect, on paper, with the main branch of the case and technically there are no impediments to reaching an agreement. But it remains to be seen if his defense is willing to sit down at the table with the accusations after the instructor has decided to analyze whether, in addition to defrauding the treasury, he incurred corruption crimes in his business relationship with the Quirón Group.
The Prosecutor’s Office denounced Alberto González Amador in the Madrid courts, as elDiario.es revealed, under an accusation: defrauding more than 350,000 euros between 2020 and 2021 using a network of false invoices. The businessman earned several million euros from commissions on the purchase and sale of medical supplies in the first months of the pandemic and sought to underpay in the Corporate Tax of his company, Maxwell Cremona, allocating expenses of hundreds of thousands of euros for work that he never They existed, but they benefited him fiscally.
During the first months of the investigation, the representation of Isabel Díaz Ayuso’s partner tried to combat the Treasury’s accusations and defended that the work was real, providing invoices and explanations about their business attempts in Mexico and the Ivory Coast. But the strategy was shifting, little by little, towards the recognition of the facts and the strategy of damage control. First, withdrawing some invoices with which he had tried to pay less taxes; and, a month before being reported, offering a pact to the Prosecutor’s Office. In that agreement, he was willing to accept eight months in prison and more than half a million euros in debts, fines and interest in exchange for not going to jail and closing the case with a compliant sentence.
“Certainly, two crimes have been committed against the Public Treasury,” said his lawyer in an email addressed to the prosecutor who was investigating him, Julián Salto. At that time González Amador was willing to accept his two tax crimes and, as the months passed and the investigation went by, he also covered the documentary falsification that was attributed to him in the bankruptcy proceedings for the unreal invoices. As the prosecutor himself told him in an email once he was denounced, this agreement was possible even if the rest of the defendants did not want to reach an agreement.
The Treasury investigation undertaken by the Prosecutor’s Office was so exhaustive that the proceedings opened in a Madrid court barely went beyond requesting all the documentation from the treasury and calling González Amador himself and his alleged associates to testify. Without success because, to date, neither Díaz Ayuso’s partner nor the rest of the defendants have appeared before the judge. His first statement was scheduled for May 20, but that day the businessman, after avoiding the press by wearing a wig, returned home without appearing because it had not been possible to locate some of the accused. His second appearance, already at the end of June, was also postponed and the commission agent did not even enter the Plaza de Castilla.
On both occasions, the possible pact with the Prosecutor’s Office continued to be the real protagonist, a topic of conversation in the court hallway and before the judge herself. On the day of his second statement, in fact, the objective was to sign that pact and seal his sentence accordingly, which is why he waited for his lawyers at a nearby hotel. But that operation was aborted when the popular accusations of PSOE and Más Madrid filed a document requesting that the case be expanded. And that it should not stop at the double tax fraud, but rather study its relationship with the Quirón Group, the healthcare giant that serves as preferred contractor for the Community of Madrid chaired by Isabel Díaz Ayuso.
From tax fraud to corruption
The request of the political parties went far beyond the tax fraud that González Amador had acknowledged in writing. They asked the judge to investigate the links between the businessman and the Quirón Group which, as elDiario.es revealed, is not limited to jobs and invoices totaling hundreds of thousands of euros. Includes direct economic relations with Fernando Camino, president of Quirón Prevention. For example, in the purchase of a company owned by his wife for almost half a million euros. Shortly before, he had earned almost two million in commissions for selling masks to a company, in turn, linked to Camino. This businessman is a key figure in his professional rise linked to Chiron.
PSOE and Más Madrid denounced, among other things, that some of these operations responded to a strategy for Camino to collect a commission from these mask purchase and sale operations and asked the judge to collect González Amador’s communications with Quirón. The magistrate’s first response was negative. But this week, in an unusual move, the judge herself has considered an appeal against a decision that she herself had made and has opened a separate piece to analyze these accusations for, among others, crimes of corruption in business.
It is a separate piece separated from the main case of tax fraud and that, on paper, does not prevent González Amador from also signing the agreement that he has been negotiating for months with the Prosecutor’s Office for his 350,000 euros underpaid in Corporate Tax. Before the summer, the Prosecutor’s Office opposed investigating this derivative of the case. But the scenario affects the strategy of the businessman, who from the beginning has tried to make the case last as short as possible to avoid inevitable public exposure.
González Amador can afford to accept a few months in prison because, since he has no criminal record and intends to pay every cent of his financial sentence, he is not in danger of having to go to prison. But a first prison sentence, pending a second investigation, can open the door to mandatory compliance with the sentence. For example, if the first was suspended on the condition of not reoffending or if the record is considered countable.
The coming weeks will, therefore, be key to knowing if González Amador’s defense continues with the agreement in the main case for tax fraud or if it cools down these negotiations with the Prosecutor’s Office, waiting to see how the second branch of the case progresses. . All this, while a second complaint advances much faster than the original: the case against the State Attorney General, Álvaro García Ortiz, for revelation of secrets after a complaint filed by the businessman. The Supreme Court announced the opening of proceedings that could also be a tool for González Amador’s defense to question the accusations against him, although at the moment it has not explored that avenue.
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