Tax agency officials among almost 30 people to face trial for alleged fraud in Malaga

A total of 27 people in Malaga province are on trial for being part of an alleged network of state AEAT tax agency officials involved in irregular dealings with managers and business owners. A date for the trial has yet to be set. Eight of the defendants are public workers.

The court opened an oral trial upon a request from the prosecution, which accuses the defendants of crimes of setting up and belonging to a criminal organisation, bribery, forgery, prevarication, revealing secrets and money-laundering.

In addition to the eight public workers, who would reportedly divide the tasks according to the department, the other defendants are accounting and consultancy employees or business owners who have commissioned the irregular procedures. The investigations carried out so far indicate that this group had been operating for three years, allegedly led by one of the employees.

The investigation, carried out since mid-2022, revealed that the officials were allegedly offered to carry out irregular procedures for management firms and companies, such as fast-tracking taxpayer files, lifting seizures or granting payment deferrals.

In its initial indictment, the prosecution requests a sentence of 32.5 years in prison for the ringleader of the network, who is accused of the crimes of forming a criminal organisation, bribery, forgery, money-laundering, disclosure of secrets and prevarication.

For the rest of the accused, sentences range from 32 and a half years in prison for the main defendant to four and a half years for money-laundering for one of the defendants. In total, the requested sentences amount to some 380 years in prison.

According to the investigation, the defendants also issued tax and digital certificates without complying with established requirements, such as being present in person, and other false certificates in which, for example, it was reported that the taxpayer was up to date with payments and had no debts with the tax agency.

The alert in Malaga was raised when the AEAT detected a reportedly falsified solvency certificate that had been presented for a public procedure in Madrid. As a result, the Malaga prosecution launched an investigation. Initially, it was estimated that around a thousand documents had been issued.

The police operation was carried out in two phases, leading to the arrest of the tax officials and of the heads of tax offices and consultancies, business owners and self-employed workers, as well as to the intervention of abundant documentation, which has been analysed by specialists from the National Police and experts from the AEAT.