Starting this Tuesday, the National Court will hold the trial for the ‘Nummaria case’ in which the actors Imanol Arias and Ana Duato will sit in the dock, along with another thirty defendants, for alleged crimes against the Public Treasury. The Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office and the State Attorney’s Office request around 30 years in prison for both actors and also for the producer of the series ‘Cuéntamé como paso’ and Duato’s husband –Miguel Ángel Bernardeu– and the actor’s sister –Ana Isabel Arias Domínguez–, for allegedly having evaded taxes through a law firm –Nummaria– supposedly dedicated to building and maintaining a legal-economic structure destined for this purpose. Specifically, Anticorruption demands 32 years in prison for Duato, while Arias faces 27 years in prison. For its part, the State Attorney’s Office – which represents the Tax Agency in the procedure – requests similar penalties: 28 years for both and fines totaling approximately 16 million euros. SOLIDARITY BONDS OF MORE THAN TWO MILLION According to a provisional calendar prepared by the court, the oral hearing is expected to last until the month of September for approximately 24 sessions. In the order to open the oral trial, agreed in July 2020, the head of the Central Court of Instruction number 2, Ismael Moreno, imposed a joint and several bail on Duato along with three other defendants of more than 2.5 million euros in order. to the eventual compensation to the Public Treasury for the defrauded personal income tax corresponding to the years 2010, 2011, 2012, 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017. As for Arias, the magistrate also imposed a joint and several bail on him along with six other defendants worth just over 2.4 million euros for the IRPF not paid between the years 2010 and 2015. “KEEP THE ACCUMULATED ASSETS HIDDEN” Judge Moreno concluded that the Nummaria firm created a structure of companies “whose sole purpose was to avoid the taxation of the income generated by their professional activity and keeping hidden the accumulated assets of the benefits that it generated. The indictment from the Public Ministry also targets four entities as civilly responsible and places the owner of the office, Fernando Peña, at the center of the plot to evade taxes. According to Anticorruption, Peña, “in order to prevent the illicit activities he carried out” under the cover of tax advice from being detected, created a network of Spanish companies while controlling multiple companies in England, Costa Rica, Canada, Uruguay or Luxembourg. These companies – more than 200 in number – were used “both to facilitate the opacity of the operations of the Nummaria office, and to deliver them to clients who wanted to use them to carry out the illicit activities” investigated in the case. This opacity was sought both in front of the Public Treasury and in front of other third parties, individuals and legal entities that held some credit right against the defendants. “The members of the office were aware that these structures were going to be used to carry out criminal activities,” recalls the Public Ministry. The document adds that the corporate structures created were practically identical for all affected clients of the Nummaria law firm and the purpose of them in most cases was to avoid taxation by Corporate Tax or VAT of the Spanish operating companies or , in the case of natural persons, by personal income tax. FRAUD OF SIX AND SEVEN YEARS Specifically, for the actor Imanol Arias, Nummaria created a structure that allowed him to hide part of his income from the treasury, mainly from his participation in the television series ‘Cuéntame como paso’. According to the Anti-Corruption document, the contributions allegedly defrauded in his personal income tax would amount to 2.7 million euros. For this reason, the actor is charged with a total of six crimes against the Public Treasury, all of them referring to the payment of personal income tax for the years between 2010 and 2015, both inclusive. For her part, according to the Prosecutor’s Office brief, the actress Ana Duato defrauded the Treasury of 1.9 million euros, and she is charged with seven tax crimes also related to personal income tax. In his case in two periods: 2010-2012, and the one between 2014 and 2017. As for the ‘brain’ of the scheme, Fernando Peña, who allegedly defrauded 15.7 million euros, the Prosecutor’s Office accuses him of 68 crimes. for which 298 years and 9 months in prison are requested. Among these crimes are criminal organization, procedural fraud, a crime of falsifying a commercial document, two crimes of insolvency and dozens against the Public Treasury. According to Anticorruption, to control the system that allowed clients like Arias and Duato to defraud the payment of taxes, the head of Nummaria counted on his son Pedro Ángel Peña Bello and the department heads José Luis Álvarez García (prosecutor), Pedro Mena Regodón ( accountant) and Francisco Javier Gómez Gutiérrez (legal), who, according to the instructions, “act in coordination under the leadership of Fernando Peña and with distribution of functions among them, maintaining their illicit activity permanently at least since 2005” . The system they used kept the ownership of the companies hidden in many cases, which avoided tax contingencies due to personal income tax, as well as those associated with the distribution of profits from the companies to their shareholders (dividends and similar) or possible unjustified capital gains derived from them. of ownership and/or capital contributions via increases or loans from individuals to operating companies, as explained by the instructor. To achieve this, they prevented billing to clients from being made from the operating companies, shifting said billing to companies subject to the regime of attribution or imputation of income, which finally managed to simulate the departure of income from Spain without any taxation in the country.
