2023-10-21 00:20:48
The Guipuzcoan industrialist José María Aristrain, acquitted last year in the major trial for tax fraud in the history of Spain, has once again won a battle against the Treasury. This time, the Madrid Court has not considered it sufficiently proven that ‘the steel magnate’ bought a home in 2012 owned by a company of which he was the sole director in order, according to the Tax Agency, to avoid paying VAT on the reform and prevent it from being seized as part of the bail established for the case opened for the alleged non-payment of 211 million euros in taxes. The Court recognizes that there are anomalies in the operation, but does not see in it the intention to hinder the work of the public ministry, as the Prosecutor’s Office claimed, because “there is no logic in trying to carry out a search with an asset that is transmitted to the administrator of the society”. Quite a setback for the Treasury, which in 2011 turned a man until then almost as anonymous as he was rich into its number one enemy.
Both things, money and discretion, are the enhanced inheritance of his father, José María Aristrain Noain, who went from collecting scrap metal to being a director of the Central Bank and the Development Bank and creating a steel empire taking advantage of the autarky of Franco’s regime and its ease of understanding with those who legislated it. In 1986 he died in a helicopter accident on the Cote d’Azur, leaving his two children María Ángeles (who received that name from Altos Hornos de Vizcaya blast furnace 1) and José María (only 24 years old) a fortune that in Spain It was only surpassed by that of Ruiz Mateos.
Shortly after, the big mergers in the steel sector arrived and Aristrain showed that he has also inherited his father’s good nose for business. In 1997, the Government decided to privatize Aceralia, an operation in which the family group took over 10% of the company. In 2002, his sister sold her his shares coinciding with the merger of Aceralia with Arbed and Usinor, which gave rise to the birth of Arcelor, which, in turn, four years later was bought by Mittal. Today it is estimated that the Basque industrialist owns 2% of the resulting giant, ArcelorMittal, which adds to the 11% of Tubacex of which he is the main shareholder.
Last year, Forbes magazine valued his fortune at 1.2 billion, and the publication only takes into account business assets, not personal ones. For example, he does not put a price on a residence in Gstaad (Switzerland), blocks of buildings in the center of Madrid, a bull ranch, an 18,000-hectare hunting estate in Cáceres or a collection of cars. And, of course, also left out of his radar is the network of opaque companies and foundations in Liechtenstein and Switzerland that, according to a 2012 journalistic investigation, his father created.
In 2011, the Treasury breaks its desire to go unnoticed. He assures that in 1998 he established Corporación JMAC BV, a company that he first established in Holland (a country in which companies holding listed shares were not taxed on dividends or capital gains generated by the sale of securities) and then in Luxembourg ( where there is no corporate tax), but managing it at all times from his home in Pozuelo de Alarcón. Furthermore, always according to the accusation, a part of the profits of this firm were reintroduced into Spain while the other was diverted to companies located in tax havens. One of them, domiciled in the British Virgin Islands, covered the expenses of the residence in Gstaad, where the businessman pretended to have his domicile since 2005, thus avoiding paying personal income tax and wealth tax. Total, fifteen crimes against the Public Treasury and 210,980,706.23 euros stolen between 2006 and 2009 for which the Prosecutor’s Office requests a sentence of 64 years in prison and a fine of 1,190 million euros, and decrees a bail of 750 million euros. euros and an embargo that forces Ariastrian to put his 55-meter-long megayacht up for sale and which he uses to protect himself from paying the pension to his ex-wife and three children.
In January of last year, the Madrid Court did not consider it proven that the industrialist remained in Spain more than 183 days a year during the reported period and considered that the domicile of Corporación JMAC BV in Luxembourg is part of the exercise of freedom of establishment. admitted by the jurisprudence of the Court of Justice of the European Union even when its purpose is to obtain more favorable tax treatment. He then decreed the lifting of the embargo and the Tax Agency removed his name from its list of defaulters. She remains convinced that she has committed the biggest tax fraud in our history (the Prosecutor’s Office has already announced its intention to appeal the acquittal), but the new doctrine of the Supreme Court prevents including debts that are not final in the file.
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