Ontinyent’s lawyer Ramón Cerdá adds a new sentence for his role as supplier of companies to a plot that defrauded 40 million euros in VAT. The National Court has imposed the payment of compensation of 65,098 euros to the Public Treasury and a sentence of 4 months in prison as a necessary collaborator in the crime of fraud. Although the Prosecutor’s Office requested 12 months in prison for him, the sentence applies the mitigating circumstance of undue delays due to the delay that dragged the judicial process.
Cerdá, in fact, was already sentenced in 2017 to 13 years in prison in another piece of the same case, arising from Operation Medina -which was deployed in 2006- and divided into different parts given its magnitude. The also novelist, who promoted an incubator of dormant companies that offered on a website and transferred in 24 hours from his operations center in Ontinyent without leaving an apparent trace, has instead been acquitted of the crime of false documentation of which he was also accused.
The National High Court considers it proven that the lawyer offered the potential buyers of his companies a figurehead as an administrator, so that the new owner could disassociate himself from the company and use it to commit crimes. According to the judgment, on some occasions the figureheads were real, people with limited economic means who, for a small fee, agreed to become apparent administrators and open bank accounts in the name of the companies, obtaining from the banks, in addition, the passwords Internet that allow the real owner of the company to carry out as many bank transactions as they wish.
Societies “trout”
On other occasions, however, the businessman supposedly looked for people who identified themselves in the notary’s offices under another identity, presenting a DNI in the name of these third parties.
Since at least 2003, with the intention of defrauding the Public Treasury, Cerdá controlled various companies that, with the role of “trout”, participated in the VAT fraud and were used by others to justify purchases of computer and telephony material; reporting false figures on the aforementioned input tax. The benefits of the activity were channeled through two patrimonial societies of Ontinyentí itself. The companies that were part of the plot requested a refund of the corresponding VAT, which was the loot for which they had been set up. Some of the biggest corruption scandals in Spain have emerged from the nursery of dormant companies in Cerdá -baptized as the Spanish Mossack Fonseca-: from Nóos to Gürtel, passing through Nueva Rumasa, Marsans or Gowex. The lawyer also published several erotic and mystery novels and is the author of titles such as “Hacienda robs us?”; “The Treasury (not) we are all” or “How to complain to the Treasury”. He is currently in prison after accumulating several convictions for fraud. 0
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