The gas companies in the Montoro scheme saved 10.5 million in five years.

The Tax Agency estimates that the five gas companies investigated in the Cristóbal Montoro scheme would have saved 10.5 million euros over five years thanks to the reform of the economic activities tax (IAE), approved by the Ministry of Finance at the request of Equipo Económico, the consulting firm founded by the former minister himself.

This is stated in a report on the case initiated by the head of the investigating court number 2 of Tarragona, to which La Vanguardia has had access, in which the former minister Montoro and eight other members of the ministry during the government of Mariano Rajoy, the partners of the Economic Team and the top executives of five gas companies, as well as the Association of Industrial and Medicinal Gas Manufacturers (AFGIM) appear as investigated.

The AEAT inspector who drafted the text, in support of the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office, based it on an internal document found at one of the companies under investigation, which estimated that it had saved €438,000 annually after persuading Montoro's team to reform the IAE (Economic and Economic Income Tax) in 2018.

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The five gas companies—Air Liquide, Abelló, Messer, Praxair, and Sociedad Española de Carburos Metálicos—reportedly achieved a profit of €2.1 million per year, equivalent to €10.5 million over five years. This money was not collected for the public coffers, resulting in a "considerable saving in the IAE (Economic Tax) rates."

The judge has kept the investigation secret for eight years amid suspicions of a plot within the Ministry of Finance, when it was headed by Cristóbal Montoro, to approve tailor-made reforms in exchange for payment to the firm he founded and from which he legally left in 2008, Montoro y Asociados, which later became known as Equipo Económico (EE).

The revenue that was not collected was supposed to go to autonomous communities and municipalities.

According to the report, "in the preparation of the investigated draft, the alleged existence of decisions, omissions of information/controls, possible contradictions, the transfer to private interests of decisions and powers that would materially be exercised by the beneficiaries of the reform, the lack of transparency... at the expense of the treasury of the territorial entities" would be observed.

The case states that the gas companies have been seeking modifications for years to obtain tax benefits and were successful on two occasions, after paying EE. The first was with the electricity tax benefit in 2014, when they introduced their sector as a beneficiary of the tax exemption. The second was the IAE tax exemption in 2018. "The tax benefits under investigation appear not to have been adopted if there were not a decisive external factor unrelated to technical criteria," such as the contracting of EE by the affected companies.

The lost revenue was intended for autonomous communities and municipalities. As a result, the General Secretariat for Regional and Local Financing submitted an amendment requesting compensation for the loss of revenue.

This contradicts the reports submitted for the approval of the reform, which asserted that the legal change would have no impact on revenue collection, thus denying the possibility of municipalities activating mechanisms to compensate for lost revenue. Therefore, the Tax Agency maintains in the reports submitted to the judge that the reform caused legal uncertainty. It also warns that the approved texts are "identical" to those submitted by the Ministry of Finance.

The texts approved for the tax reform were "identical" to those of the Economic Team

The inspector in charge of the investigation believes that the gas companies paid EE after the reform's success, "without finding any study, opinion, or technical work demonstrating the existence of added value associated with EE's paid performance." In his opinion, their work appears to be "limited to limited contacts with the Ministry of Finance bodies responsible for establishing the investigated tax benefit in the draft text."

Like the Mossos d'Esquadra, the AEAT concludes that the legal reforms under investigation were obtained through payments to the United States. "Such payments were allegedly made for the purpose of negotiating and influencing the Ministry of Finance to obtain favorable legislative reforms," it notes.