The National Court does not agree on the taxes that Alberto Esgueva must pay, whom Anticorruption accuses of being the ringleader of the wind plot of illegal collection of commissions in Castilla y León. Between January and May, Esgueva won two sentences in the aforementioned court against the liquidations of the Tax Agency that totaled nine million euros. At first, the judges ruled that the Treasury had made a mistake when inspecting his company, based in Madrid, from Valladolid. But in the summer, and coinciding with the publication of the sentences in elDiario.es, another section changed the criteria and endorsed the payment of six million euros. Treasury has taken the case to the Supreme Court.
In December 2014, a report by the Tax Agency detected a massive commission collection system in Castilla y León in exchange for permits for wind farms. Eight years later, the main one pointed out, Alberto Esgueva, has several open fronts. Anti-corruption asks for 12 years in prison for collecting 50 million euros, mainly from Iberdrola, through the use of companies that were what the Prosecutor’s Office considers “a pure artifice.” Between 2004 and 2006, Esgueva was CEO of the public company Excal, in charge of helping companies internationalize and dependent on the Ministry of Economy, which approved wind farms.
In addition, the Tax Agency opened inspections because he received the money with operations for the sale of shares that did not pay taxes, but according to the Treasury it was a provision of services to the companies that built the parks and had to pay almost 20 million in VAT. Esgueva appealed to the National High Court, which at first agreed with him. In two sentences, one in May and the other in January 2021, he was exempted from those payments. The sixth section considered that the Treasury had made an error when inspecting his company, based in Madrid, from the Tax Agency in Valladolid, and that this vitiated the entire procedure.
The administration considered that the inspected company, San Cayetano Wind, “had its fiscal domicile on Núñez de Balboa street in Madrid, where it was neither located nor known.” However, the Court considered that “there is no doubt that the territorial competence to carry out the inspection actions would correspond to the Madrid Regional Unit”.
With two rulings in this regard, Esgueva’s defense took it for granted that he would win the pending lawsuits, which between fees, fines and interest amounted to some 20 million euros. In addition, he was counting on using the argument that the origin of the case is null in the criminal trial that is going to be held in Valladolid and thus requesting that the entire accusation be dropped. However, on July 4, a new court judged another claim by the Esgueva company Intercatia (which absorbed San Cayetano Wind) against the Treasury. On this occasion, the second section assessed a claim against settlements totaling six million euros.
As in the two previous cases, Intercatia indicated that the Tax Agency in Madrid should have inspected it and “cites in support of its thesis the ruling of January 13, 2021 issued by the sixth section of this room.” The Treasury replied that it had appealed to the Supreme Court and the court decides that, therefore, it is a live case and that it is not bound by that criterion. “We cannot understand the doctrine contained in such a sentence as firm and definitive,” he pointed out.
After analyzing the file and the writings of the Tax Agency to use the exception that allows him to inspect a Madrid company from Valladolid, he concludes that the procedure is correct. “There is, therefore, no lack of territorial jurisdiction in the department that carried out the inspection actions.” This newspaper has tried, without success, to contact Esgueva’s defense, whose case will end up in the Supreme Court and adds to the legal tangle in which, almost a decade later, the wind plot is still involved.
