Tuesday, June 4, 2024, 1:16 p.m.
| Updated 1:58 p.m.
The defense of the popular actor Imanol Arias has decided to tell how he went to court and has acknowledged the commission of five tax crimes to pay less taxes on his television earnings. The artist’s lawyer has reached an agreement in accordance with the Prosecutor’s Office and the State Attorney’s Office, the two accusations of the ‘Nummaria’ case, and has accepted a prison sentence of less than two years, which will allow him not to go to prison, and also pay a heavy fine.
The actor’s defense has already satisfied all the civil liability that was requested of him and, in addition, has announced that he will face the aforementioned fine that the trial court of the National Court now imposes. This agreement, ratified by legal sources consulted, will materialize in the oral hearing that will be held starting this Tuesday in the preliminary questions phase.
It should be remembered that, in addition to Imanol Arias, another thirty people are being tried, including the actress Ana Duato, for allegedly having evaded taxes through a law firm, Nummaria, supposedly dedicated to building and maintaining a legal structure. economy destined for this purpose. Duato, in principle, has not joined the list of agreements with several defendants.
Previously, the prosecutor of the ‘Nummaria case’, Tomás Herranz, announced at the beginning of the trial that he was withdrawing the accusation against Ana Isabel Arias, Imanol’s sister, who initially faced a sentence of nine and a half years in prison for various tax crimes.
Initially, 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 and Duato’s husband, Miguel Ángel Bernardeu. Specifically, Anticorruption demands 32 years in prison for Duato, while Arias faces 27 years in prison before reaching the aforementioned agreement. For its part, the State Attorney’s Office requests similar penalties: 28 years for both and fines totaling approximately 16 million euros.
According to a provisional calendar drawn up by the court, the oral hearing is expected to last until 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 two, Ismael Moreno, imposed a joint and several bail on Duato along with three other defendants of more than 2.5 million in order to 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 for the personal income tax not paid between the years 2010 to 2015.
More than 200 companies in several countries
Judge Moreno concluded that the Nummaria firm created a structure of more than 200 companies in England, Costa Rica, Canada, Uruguay or Luxembourg, “whose sole purpose was to avoid taxation of the income generated by their professional activity and keep hidden the accumulated assets of the benefits that it generated.
As for the alleged mastermind of the scheme, Fernando Peña, who allegedly defrauded 15.7 million, the Prosecutor’s Office accuses him of 68 crimes for which he is asked for 298 years and nine months in prison. 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 natural persons to operating companies, as explained by the investigating judge.
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