Cartonajes Santorromán, a company from La Rioja whose owners regularized more than half a million euros by benefiting from the 2012 tax amnesty, has once again filled out its annual accounts of invective against the “social-communist” Government and is now attacking labor laws.
“All labor legislation is aimed at proclaiming absurd rights, encouraging laziness and defending bad workers, leaving companies defenseless against this type of abuse,” says its latest management report. This company, which invoices nearly 47 million a year, has long included expressions far removed from the usual gray tone of these documents in the accounts it sends to the Commercial Registry.
If in 2021 he showed his “perplexity” after achieving record profits despite the “inept” Government, the 2023 report, recently deposited and available through Insight View, does not disappoint either.
In this case it affects “a very worrying aspect, evident for a long time, but more pronounced this year”: “The attitude of a part of the unemployed people, and some with employment as well, towards work or towards an offer of employment”.
“They don’t want to climb the professional ranks, they don’t want to take on responsibilities, covering the night shift has become an arduous task and, on Friday night, it seems unlikely,” he laments. “And remuneration is not a problem, nor do they want more, if it implies more responsibility,” he says.
He states that “the level of absenteeism has doubled, we are at 10%” and “companies cannot do anything.” “What this socialist-communist legislator does not seem to realize is that this produces increased costs, which in turn produces inflation and, finally, more poor people. Perhaps it is the objective of the legislator.”
The latest report of Randstad Researchone of the most used references to measure absenteeism, puts the rate in Spain at 6.3%, with a “significant decrease.” In recent years it has been slightly above 7% (in mid-2022), but never at 10%.
The Cartonajes Santorromán report for the 2023 financial year does not refer to the serious work accident which occurred at the facilities of this company in March of that year. An electrician from a subcontractor died at the age of 52 after being run over by a forklift with a cardboard coil while working at his plant in Calahorra.
The company increased its profit by 57.8% in 2023, to a new historical record of 4.77 million. For 2024, whose accounts he will formulate soon, he advocates “caution” and “as “Cholo” says, “game by game.” “Doing things well,” he says, will mean “delivering €1.5 million in corporate tax alone.” [sic] to waste. I would like to know how to pay that minimum rate of 15% that they advertise so much; “We never got it.”
“Despite the environment that is so against companies and entrepreneurs, the socialist-communist legislator is like that, our obligation is to keep the company up to date and in the best technical conditions of production and efficiency, trusting that there is no harm that a hundred years lasts and the reality of the facts will change the hostility with which private companies are persecuted,” he continues.
“Not amnesty”
With a “short and medium term vision” that it describes as “moderately pessimistic,” the report cites in passing another amnesty, not the fiscal one, but the one granted by the current Executive for political normalization in Catalonia.
He says that “it benefits” the “subsidized and the criminal (no amnesty), anything goes to stay in power, there are no red lines, runaway public spending, falsified unemployment figures, they fail to point between 1 and 1.5 millions more, there are plenty of public salaries, now not working is the fashion, we have to reduce the working day.” “To hell with productivity, why continue…”
One more year, he returns to the charge against regulations in Europe and Spain: “Under the umbrella of the “Green Deal”, the utopian world of the European Council, Commission and Parliament are threatening the future of our primary and secondary sectors. , with implication in the well-being of society.”
As examples, he cites the Waste Law and the PPWR or proposal for the European Regulation on Packaging and Packaging Waste. “They detect fictitious problems, adopt erroneous solutions and multiply the problems by three, in the medium term (and start over). It seems that Europe wants to shoot itself in the foot.”
Once again, the accounts include qualifications from the auditor of Cartonajes Santorromán (Grant Thornton) for not reporting, for example, the salaries and possible conflicts of interest of its leadership.
The company, whose roots go back more than a century, has been dedicated for four generations to manufacturing, selling and distributing all types of products made of corrugated cardboard, widely used by the food industry or e-commerce.
The patriarch, Leopoldo Santorromán Blázquez, serves as president and his son, Leopoldo Santorromán Saldaña, is CEO. elDiario.es tried to contact them on Friday. In their company they indicated that “they will not be here until the 7th.”
His tax amnesty emerged in a ruling from the Superior Court of Justice of La Rioja: “The founder of the company, and current president of the board of directors and the current CEO, as well as the wives of both” took advantage of the amnesty “through the presentation of model 750 declarations in which they recognized the non-declaration of relevant amounts that amounted to a sum of 527,559.26 euros,” said that resolution.
“These undeclared income could not have had any other origin than the undeclared sales of Cartonajes Santorromán, SA,” he added. In 2019, the State Attorney’s Office presented a document requesting judicial authorization so that the Tax Agency could inspect the company’s headquarters.
The Treasury had detected “voluminous submerged operations or with B money” by Cartonajes Santorromán, which managed to overthrow that inspection in court. Before the amnesty of its owners, the company always declared profits of, at most, a million, with sales that then were around 20 million a year.
Since 2008, Santorromán Jr. has presided over the Spanish Association of Corrugated Cardboard Packaging Manufacturers (AFCO). Integrated into the CEOE, this employer association represents 65 companies with a direct turnover of more than 4,000 million, 86 factories in Spain and almost 12,000 direct jobs.
Despite their criticism of “the subsidized system,” the Santorrománs are among the businessmen who, after regularizing black money in the tax amnesty that the PP launched in 2012, have received public aid in recent years. Among them, ICO loans guaranteed by the State stand out.
Cartonajes Santorromán was honored in October 2019 as company of the year by the Rioja Family Business Association. In 2016, its CEO could be seen alongside the then Deputy Secretary of Communication of the PP and then head of the Popular Party, Pablo Casado, at an event in Madrid organized by the European Federation of Corrugated Cardboard Manufacturers (FEFCO).
Months before, in 2015, the employers, the company and 17 other competitors were fined 57.7 million by the National Markets and Competition Commission (CNMC) for agreeing on prices and dividing up clients. The National Court annulled the sanction in January 2019 due to a formal defect.
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