Hundreds of thousands of euros in settlements and fines from the National Tax Administration Agency (AEAT); dispute with Social Security following a serious work accident; and veto by the Bank of Spain on the purchase of a money transfer company.
These are some controversial in Spain Dorado-Pizzorni, Venezuelans with Italian-Galician roots and notable presence in the financial sector of Latin America. Known in Venezuela for businesses such as their money transfer company Italcambio, they own the rights to the Frida Kahlo brand or Italbank, “the most important bank in Puerto Rico,” according to their website. After bursting the Spanish real estate bubble, they launched, like other Venezuelan fortunes, into the luxury segment in Madrid. The bet brought them a millionaire income and occasional lawsuits.
The latest to emerge are linked to his real estate agency Italinmuebles, which in 2021 played a role in one of the most high-profile operations of recent years in Madrid: the sale, for 14.6 million, of the most expensive penthouse in the capital , a 750 m² Triplex, including 200 m² terrace, in the former Azucarera headquarters, Montalbán street, 11, in the Los Jerónimos.
It was the icing on the cake of the luxurious rehabilitation they carried out in a building acquired in 2016 in Ebro, of which the State is among the shareholders. The exclusive promotion in ten stores sold out in eight months. The triplex (five bedrooms, seven bathrooms, robotic garage for four vehicles, 360º view of the Cibeles Palace) was the last unit sold. “It includes a spa, Turkish bath, swimming pool and Technogym gym,” Telemadrid said in April 2021, after a central European family purchased it. This is the first operation in Madrid exceeding 20,000 euros/m².
At that time, the AEAT was already well advanced in a complex inspection of Italinmuebles’ main director, Maximilian Pizzorni, son of the late Italcambio founder, Mario Pizzorni, and brother-in-law of the family’s best-known member, the Galician-Venezuelan Carlos Dorado.
The Treasury inspection gave rise to a debt of more than half a million against Pizzorni between liquidation (369,684.48 euros) and penalties (163,919.92 euros) in respect of the personal income tax of 2015 to 2018, which the Regional Economic and Administrative Court (TEAR) reduced by canceling the liquidation and the 2016 sanctions for expiration. But the main part of the report has just been confirmed by the Litigation Chamber of the Superior Court of Justice of Madrid (TSJM).
According to the judgment of September 16, the AEAT found that before the arrival of Pizzorni, Italinmuebles had had “intense” activity. In 2015, it had already achieved a turnover of more than 9 million euros, it had rehabilitated a building on Velázquez Street, in the heart of Madrid’s Golden Mile, and sold part of the apartments, “without that the entity has no dependent personnel”. The Inspectorate asked “whether the start of the employment relationship is justified from a commercial point of view”.
His conclusion was that he was not and that the employment contract Pizzorni had used to act as director of the family business was a simulation; that this relationship was commercial and not professional and that a connection existed before their move. Moreover, Pizzorni was not just a simple employee: before moving to Spain, he was already managing Italinmuebles. He served as secretary of the board of directors and legal representative and led the areas of human resources, finance and business. Duties which, according to the tax authorities, “exceed those of a simple worker”.
He was also a shareholder, although a minority; there was “an obvious link due to kinship between the partners”; and had lent money to Italinmuebles (1 million euros) to finance its projects. “Every year” his salary was “at the threshold of 600,000 euros”, the limit for paying taxes at 24%. But “the resulting method of calculating the remuneration is not justified”, ruled the AEAT, which refused him these tax advantages and sanctioned him for assessing negligent behavior.
The TSJM approved the transactions and fines of 2017 and 2018 because “clearly” the reason for his move “was not found in the employment contract signed with Italinmuebles SL” and he did not meet the conditions of this special regime.
The judgment, subject to appeal, rejects, as Pizzorni argued, that the AEAT was “obligated” to grant this special regime, because it cannot carry out an “exhaustive” prior verification of these requirements and has discovered the fraud after an investigation that lasted years. Among other things, due to the “complexity” of a procedure in which the AEAT had to send requests for information to the United Kingdom and Puerto Rico and due to the “repeated” refusal to provide documents from the part of Pizzorni, who managed to reverse the liquidation. and the sanction relating to the 2016 financial year for having expired.
With a meager workforce, Italinmuebles achieved a turnover of 22.6 million euros in 2021, the last year in which it presented its accounts in Spain, and declared a profit of 2.89 million, according to Insight View data. Pizzorni had been its administrator since its creation in 2013. First alone, then with his sister and brother-in-law. The company moved to Malta, one of the EU’s most opaque territories, in June 2022, alongside the TEAR resolution now upheld by the TSJM.
Without harness
This same body, in this case the Social Chamber, rejected last June another appeal by Italinmuebles against the decision of the National Institute of Social Security (INSS) to increase by 30% the increases on social security contributions. company in 2019. This is a serious accident at work.
In March 2018, a subcontractor worker at an Italinmuebles real estate complex fell from a height of three meters while working on the construction of two luxury villas with an area of 700 m² and a plot of land. 2,500 m² in La Moraleja, another of the most expensive areas of Madrid. “A pure and serene home with warm and welcoming spaces,” reads its website.
The worker, who was around 60 years old at the time of the accident, was recognized as having total permanent disability in September 2019. “He lacked training” and had not received information on the risks and “use obligatory” of the fall. arrest harness. that he did not have, according to the final judgment of the 22nd Criminal Court which condemned in April 2023 an offense against workers’ rights in competition with another for reckless injury to the general director of one of the subcontractors, Molior . Construcciones y Urbanismo, also from the Venezuelan capital.
In this procedure, the party concerned waived civil and criminal actions after having been compensated 29,331 euros by the defendant, the subcontractor and the insurer. In May 2018, the Labor Inspectorate considered “the lack of coordination in risk prevention” as an “indirect cause” of the incident and fined Italinmuebles 6,000 euros as the promoting company, in addition to applying the increases against which the company appealed in court. far without success, suing the INSS and the subcontractors.
Added to these setbacks is the judgment of the National Court which confirmed in July 2018 the decision of the Bank of Spain to veto the purchase by Italcambio of 67.25% of the money transfer company Mundial Money Transfer, known as Mundial Envoys, in 2016. admitting a “lack of veracity” and “falsified” notes in its accounts.
The supervisor ruled that the Venezuelan holding company lacked “suitability” based on reports from the Money Laundering Prevention Service (Sepblac). This organization warned that the buyers, Maximilian and Gabriela Pizzorni and her husband, Carlos Dorado, were linked to companies exposed to “the risk of money laundering” by operating from several tax havens; and that Pizzorni had been disqualified in July 2010 by Venezuela’s National Securities Superintendence (SNV) from operating as a financial intermediary. Also taken into account was the confiscation, in December 2003, of a shipment of $2.5 million in cash at Caracas airport from an Italcambio company. News of the veto was reported in September 2018 by El Confidencial, although it is no longer available on its website.
The use of signatures in tax havens is very common within the family. Alongside Italbank, Italinmuebles’ other partner was Management Trade Agencies INC, from Panama, where they manage several businesses. Dorado (65 years old) and Gabriela Pizzorni (72 years old) run companies in Spain such as Enhaut Ventura, Nigitmar Investments, Bauli Investments and New Charlotte SL, moved in 2011 from the Virgin Islands, a stone’s throw from Puerto Rico. Its head office, on Velázquez Street, is the same one that Molior, the subcontractor for whom this injured worker worked, has owned since 2023.
Dorado is quite well known in Venezuela. Columnist for years at El Universal, his personal website defines him as “a businessman, an economist, a visionary and a fervent defender of entrepreneurship as a fundamental element of the social development of a country”. Born in Forxa, a village in Orense, he emigrated to Venezuela as a child with his parents, of very modest origins. After studying economics, he went to work at the Italo Venezolano bank. He ended up marrying the daughter of the founder of the entity, which was very successful in those years, given the large community of immigrants of Italian origin.
In 2018, the Venezuelan media ArmandoInfo defined Dorado as “the businessman who plays with fire”: “He went from the opponent persecuted by Chavismo to the accommodating businessman who set up shop on the sidewalk opposite. » In addition to financial activities, he manages companies related to real estate, fashion (the textile company Casablanca, which he launched at the end of the 80s in association with the Galician Adolfo Domínguez) and exploitation of the Frida Kahlo brand, an artist from whom he learned in 2003. : In their Miami offices, “an employee came to work wearing a T-shirt with the printed face of a horrible lady smoking a cigar. And who is this woman? Frida Kahlo, he answered me. “And who is Frida Kahlo? » The world in 2007.
He didn’t know who she was, but he felt the business and in 2004, he created, with the painter’s only heir, his niece Isolda Pinedo, a company in Panama, Frida Kahlo Corporation, to exploit the brand. First it was tequila, then Barbie dolls, Converse sneakers, beers, clothes… Pinedo died in 2007 and Dorado has been fighting for more than a decade with Kahlo’s heirs for the rights. But that’s another story.
