The Madrid Public Prosecutor’s Office has opened a judicial investigation into the activities of the wife of regional president Isabel Díaz Ayuso. Alberto González Amador is under investigation for accusations of tax fraud and document fraud.
According to the lawsuit, to which Spanish daily El Diario has had exclusive access, Gonzalez is suspected by prosecutors of having evaded €350,951 in taxes during 2020 and 2021, by creating a web of dummy corporations and fake invoices.
He is accused of using these methods to reduce the real profits of his companies, which were made during the worst years of the Covid-19 pandemic, and thus pay less tax.
According to El Diario, Gonzalez submitted 15 false invoices for fabricated expenses, totaling €1. 7 million. That amount was deducted from his taxes as expenses, thus saving the aforementioned sum of EUR 350,951.
Both of the companies that are being investigated, Maxwell Cremona Ingeniería y Procesos para el Fomento del Medioambiente, and Masterman & Whitaker Medical Supplies and Health Process Engineering, are 100% owned by Gonzalez.
The first is a company offering healthcare services, while the second, a firm that has no employees, is dedicated to cosmetics and pharmaceuticals.
The investigation began after he filed his tax returns in 2021 and 2022, which corresponded to the previous years. The Spanish Tax Agency could see from the figures that while his companies’ sales had increased sixfold during 2020, to €2.3 million, they had only registered €8,400 in profits due to the suspect costs.
There is no suggestion of any wrongdoing by his partner, Isabel Diaz Ayuso, who is 45 years old and has been the regional premier of Madrid since 2019.
The revelations are, however, a major embarrassment both to her and her conservative Partido Popular (PP), which in recent weeks has been attacking the governing Socialist Party for its alleged links to another scandal involving commissions that were supposedly paid to the right-hand man of the former transport minister, Jose Luis Abalos, for facilitating government contracts for face masks.
The national leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijoo, said on Tuesday that Ayuso “is subject to any inspection” opened through the Tax Agency.
In an interview with Radio Onda Cero, he said that it will be his partner, Alberto González, who will have to “respond to the tax government as any citizen would do when he is the object of investigation. “
Meanwhile, the central government’s delegate in Madrid, Francisco Martín, asked Ayuso on Tuesday to give explanations.
“Paying taxes also means respecting the Constitution,” he wrote on his Twitter account. “There is an urgent need for an explanation from President Isabel Díaz Ayuso. Did you know?”
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