Simon Hunter
SPANISH media outlets have managed to get their hands on documents showing that businessman Alberto Gonzalez Amador, who is the partner of Madrid regional premier Isabel Diaz Ayuso, admitted committing two counts of tax fraud and was prepared to accept an eight-month suspended jail sentence for his crimes.
The revelation, which has been published by newspapers such as El Diario and El Pais, directly contradicts a series of claims made by Ayuso and her team, who have been arguing that the allegations are part of an orchestrated campaign against her headed by Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez of the Socialist Party.
The scandal first came to light in March, after it emerged that public prosecutors had opened a court probe into the activities of Gonzalez. He was 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 was thought to have used these invented costs to reduce the real profits of his companies, which were made during the worst years of the Covid-19 pandemic via the sale of medical equipment such as face masks, and thus pay less tax.
There was no suggestion of any wrongdoing by Ayuso, who is 45 years old and has been the conservative Partido Popular’s regional premier of Madrid since 2019.
This week Spanish media outlets reported having seen an eight-page document sent to the public prosecutor by Gonzalez’s lawyer, in which his client admitted to having committed the two tax offences and detailing the punishment he was willing to accept.
These included an eight-month suspended jail sentence, as well as the repayment of the €350,951 defrauded, interest on that amount, and a fine of 40% of what was owed to the Tax Agency. In total, a sum of €520,000.
The revelations directly contradict Ayuso’s offensive to present her partner as the victim of a political witch hunt.
Just last week Ayuso claimed that the Tax Agency had in fact owed Gonzalez money, rather than the other way round, and presented a rebate of €620,000 as proof of this.
In fact, this sum was returned to her partner after he paid it along with his 2022 tax return in a bid to settle his debt. It was not accepted by the Tax Agency, which opted to pursue a judicial process, leading to the rebate Ayuso had cited.
Gonzalez’s lawyer recognised this voluntary payment in his eight-page letter to prosecutors and admitted that it could not be accepted.
The latest revelations have not, however, prompted Ayuso’s team to abandon their claims of a political witchhunt.
After this week’s news emerged, her chief-of-staff, Miguel Angel Rodriguez, tweeted on social network X that he had ‘the sensation that the State Prosecutor General will end up in jail’.
“That’s my personal opinion, from my personal phone. Sanchez’s witchhunt against Diaz Ayuso is going badly. Spain is not Venezuela.”
Since the scandal broke, Rodriguez has threatened to shut down El Diario, one of the newspapers that has been publishing stories about the fraud, as well as falsely accusing two of its journalists of donning masks and trying to force their way into Ayuso’s home in Madrid.
He has also spread the false claims that it was not Gonzalez who owed the Tax Agency money but rather the other way around.
