Case closed. The businessman who gave the Catalan mask blows during the pandemic admitted before the judge to having defrauded the Treasury of the VAT corresponding to the emergency operation to supply medical supplies to the Generalitat in March 2020, as elDiario.es learned. The man accepted four months in prison for crimes against the public treasury and will not go to prison after confessing and returning the money.
The cause dates back to the days of confinement. Basic Devices, a company led by businessman JMPR, was established in 2008, and as of 2020, it had no employees and remained inactive. It was only with the pandemic that it regained momentum: it bought medical equipment for 28.4 million euros from a Chinese company, which it then resold to two single buyers: l Institut Català de la Salut (ICS) for a total of 35 million euros and the Institute of Applied Radiopharmacy of Barcelona (IRAB) for 4.2 million.
Although, when the scale of the payment of 35 million was revealed (paid in a single transfer on March 20, 2020, in full confinement), the Generalitat announced that it would report the Basic Devices for fraud, it ultimately decided not to do it. The Ministry of Health assured that, despite initial doubts, it had received the four million masks and one million protective suits it had purchased from the company.
The Anti-Fraud Office of Catalonia (OAC), the Treasury and the Public Prosecutor’s Office looked into the operation and its tax consequences. The compliance agreement between the accused and the prosecution and the public prosecutor was ratified this Wednesday in a court in Vilafranca del Penedès (Barcelona). As this is a compliance decision, it will not be appealed by either party, allowing it to be final and the case closed.
The businessman admitted that “he did not pay to the public treasury part of the VAT” accumulated on the two sales he made to the ICS and the IRAB. The accused admitted a crime against the Public Treasury and accepted the four-month prison sentence, which he will not serve after admitting the facts and returning the money. He will also pay a fine of 102,220 euros. Both the 255,550.3 euros defrauded and the late payment interest (13,358.55 euros) have already been returned to the Public Treasury in 2022 by Basic Devices.
Initially, the prosecution filed a complaint against JMPR and his son, considering that they “jointly” held the management of the Basic Devices, even if ultimately the agreement only envisages holding the father responsible for the fraud by placing him as “the only one authorized to have access to the company’s bank accounts. » and co-author of two other accounts.
The agreement states that the company did not submit the annual summary VAT declaration and that the quarterly declarations did not reflect the recorded amounts, but rather others “by decision of the accused JMPR aimed at artificially reducing the differential “tax.
The mask operation occurred amid competition and chaos between administrations to obtain medical supplies, a circumstance of which several suppliers took advantage to obtain considerable advantages, as reflected in the reports of the Court of Auditors on pandemic shopping.
In the case of Basic Devices, the Catalan Anti-Fraud Office ruled out that it was a case of corruption, although it described its hiring, carried out after preliminary contacts, as “reckless”. “not very transparent” with the company.
Government missteps in purchasing equipment from the company also contributed to increased suspicion. On March 19, 2020, a few days after the state of alert was declared, ICS acquired medical equipment from Basic Devices for around 60 million euros, of which 35 million was ultimately paid. The same afternoon, alarms went off in the department. The economy and banks warned that the company that received the transfer of one million dollars from the Generalitat had been inactive for some time and had never carried out operations of similar value.
On March 22, Basic Devices administrators met with Economy officials at the department’s headquarters and provided enough documents to dispel suspicion and the complaint filed with the Mossos was withdrawn. On May 5, the government withdrew from one of the contracts with the company and the initial agreement of 60.5 million remained until the 35th already advanced in March. On December 5 of the same year, the ICS certified that all the material had been received.
As revealed by this newspaper, Basic Devices was a company without any type of activity, without employees and which, at the time of concluding the contract with the Generalitat, had not correctly presented its accounts to the commercial register. It also showed how a network of fake profiles on the alleged directors of this company appeared on search engines in mid-2021, making it difficult to find out who was really behind this company. The Treasury achieved this.
