The Senate commission of inquiry into Koldo affair discovered possible fraud of up to 163 million euros in Ministry of Health contracts during the pandemic.
Popular Party Senators Salvador Foronda And Luis Santamariaspokesperson for the PP at the commission, asked this Tuesday the Secretary of State for Finance, Jesus Gasconfor at least 135 contracts signed by the department he then headed Salvador Illa. The corresponding invoices included VAT which should not have been paid, since this tax does not exist in China. AND there is no record indicating that it was returned by the awarding companies.
The People’s Group of the Upper House has been questioning the Tax Agency, the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Health, as well as the Court of Auditors, about these bills for months and has not been able to obtain a response. no response.
Senator Foronda announced that he would bring the matter before the commission’s board of directors so that it could submit the case known to the prosecution. “We do not prejudge that there is fraud, nor that there is an organized conspiracy behind this,” explained PP sources in the Senate, “but at the very least, there seems to be fraud in these companies to charge VAT that does not correspond to them and a negligence of Health and Treasury for not demanding its return“.
The most popular exposed dozens of pages of documentation, to which this newspaper had access, with the contracts and accounting of Health and the Treasury, in addition to the audits of the Court of Auditors. All include the payment of invoices with VAT included and not the reimbursement of these amounts, as would be required.
Only in one case has this regularization started to be processed. This is a contract concluded by FCS Select Products SL for something more than 217 million euroson March 23, 2020, with the General Directorate of the Common Portfolio of Services of the Ministry of Health.
This call for tenders included a VAT of 45.6 million which the company would have asked to return after verifying that in China, where it acquired the millions of compromised masks, this tax was not paid.
In the file sent by the Tax Agency to the Senate, only the sending by the Treasury of model 069the form that regularizes the reimbursement of this amount that the company received for VAT which, in reality, never entered the coffers of the Chinese state.
No response
But despite the senators’ insistence on demanding proof that this money was returned to the tax authorities, no response has been received from the Ministry of Finance. Maria Jesus Montero (PSOE) nor Health, now led by Monique Garcia (Add).
The most serious thing is that in all the other contracts analyzed, The start of the process of reentry of the collected VAT does not even appear. It is for this reason that the popular people warn that they will summon Montero and recall Illa, today president of the Generalitat of Catalonia.
The PP demands that the first vice-president and the former minister explain themselves “Where are these 163 million underpaid VAT” and find out if there are other contracts, among the hundreds that the government has celebrated with dozens of different companies during the pandemic, in which the winning companies were able to inappropriate overcharging for irregular VAT.
There is also the aggravating circumstance that Santé continued to include the payment of this tax in calls for tenders closed after April 23 of the same year, as as proof of certified accounting by the Court of Auditors. On that date, the European Commission had already declared sales of masks exempt from VAT, at the height of the Covid-19 health crisis.
In addition, the vast majority of companies that appear in the files presented by Senator Foronda have a social purpose other than health. This would make it easier for them, taking advantage of the millions of euros billed for VAT that did not correspond to them, to then be able to fraudulently compensate him with operations corresponding to its usual activity.
According to the PP’s complaint to the Senate, some of the beneficiary companies have already have been liquidated or are part of networks this would make it difficult to follow the money trail. Beyond the fact that it does not appear in any of the documents that the Treasury or Health have taken any action to recover the 163 million euros.
