Judicial blow to one of the richest families in Spain, the Isidro Rincón, whom the jurist Vicente Guilarte advised for 25 years until in July 2023 he was named interim president of the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ). His listed real estate company (socimi), Ibervalles, has just lost in the National Court an old tax lawsuit of 734,000 euros (not counting interest) that he had been dragging on for more than a decade.
The dispute dates back to 2013, when the State Tax Administration Agency (AEAT) sanctioned Ibervalles for a lawsuit that, as has now emerged, has its origin in the illegal deductions that were recorded in the 2007 Corporate Tax with capital gains. obtained from the sale of a luxury home in Madrid.
Owners of the Europac paper mill until 2018, when they sold it to the British giant DS Smith (from that operation they earned 640 million), the Isidro Rincóns are little known but have come to appear in the top 100 of the greatest Spanish fortunes. In 2021 they entered the Forbes List and the latest ranking of the rich The World places them in 108th place, with an estimated equity of 600 million.
This large family, owner of the Rinconada estate and the Barcolobo winery, is among the large estates that are pioneers in betting on free investment companies (SIL), heirs of the SICAVs with which they pay 1% in Corporate Tax. Most of their fortune is channeled through Ibervalles, listed on the BME Growth SME market that joined the socimi regime (with extensive tax advantages) in 2022.
With 77% of its shares in the hands of eight family members, the company invests in offices and, since this year, luxury hotels and “flex living”, what is known as “flexible housing” for profiles such as the so-called digital nomads. , “with high potential for revaluation in consolidated areas of Spain and Lisbon,” according to its website.
Ibervalles, which has declined to respond to elDiario.es, invoiced 7.2 million until June and declared 5 million profits, according to the semi-annual accounts it prepared on October 24. They do not contain provisions for this dispute with the Treasury, which has been reported for years with little detail and which, as usually happens in these cases, has been settled in court.
In September 2020, Ibervalles managed to get the National Court to suspend payment of the AEAT claim. The lawsuit was then settled at 523,334.81 euros in settlement and another 209,959.71 euros in penalties. Now, the Court has just rejected the company’s appeal, confirming a resolution of the Central Economic Administrative Court (TEAC) from March 2020.
The ruling of the Contentious Chamber on November 18 reveals that the lawsuit was related to the deduction of capital gains from the sale of a single-family home owned by the company in Madrid in which the matriarch of this family of billionaires, María Victoria, lived. Corner.
Ibervalles deducted 419,919.41 euros for the reinvestment of extraordinary profits obtained with that operation, with which it achieved “a gain that is integrated into the tax base of 2,565,729.33 euros.”
These capital gains and those from the sale of a store and a garage in Mallorca were reinvested in two properties in Madrid: the construction of an office building in Alcobendas and the purchase of an industrial warehouse in Torres de la Alameda. But the AEAT overturned most of the reliefs for several reasons that the Court now confirms.
There was no rent
The first is that the rental of that home did not exist: “It was not proven that it was rented and, therefore, that it was affecting the economic activity of the company,” as determined by the AEAT, which described the legal relationship as “precarious.” “between the property and the intended tenant, mother of the ten brothers who own this company.”
The judges agree: “The truth is that a series of indications converge, base facts, perfectly accredited, from which to infer the conclusion that there was no such lease.”
The first, “the absence of economic capacity to satisfy the income” of the matriarch, who in those years “did not file a personal income tax return, nor were other sources of income known to her.” “More than enough arguments” to conclude, as the AEAT did, that it was not a rental, but “a precarious situation, loan or free transfer.”
Furthermore, there was no documentary evidence of that rental: “Accounting does not prove the reality of the legal relationships” between the parties. To try to overturn the Treasury’s arguments, the Isidro Rincón advisors provided a lease contract dated November 1989 and various invoices in the name of Victoria Rincón with rent payments between 1995 and 2005.
Payments that, according to the company, were made in cash. The judges conclude that “the cash deliveries could have been made or not” and that the invoices presented “are nothing more than a formal receipt, prepared at the convenience of the parties, from which the underlying reality cannot be inferred, simply because mention that the lease contract appears in a private document.”
The deception of the Treasury did not stop there. The AEAT also verified that the building in Alcobendas in which the capital gains were supposedly reinvested had already been built when the house was sold; and “on this the claim has not raised any controversy.”
It also confirmed that the warehouse acquired by Ibervalles in Torres de la Alameda belonged to Europac. And the regulations prohibit the application of these deductions when the operations affect entities of the same group, as in this case.
The AEAT began a “limited” inspection of Ibervalles in April 2012, which it expanded two months later, and sanctioned it on November 21, 2013, days before Guilarte was appointed member of the CGPJ as a jurist of recognized prestige upon proposal. of the PP.
Before the Court, Ibervalles tried to claim that he had been asked for documentation unrelated to the inspection. “It is difficult to understand the statement of the claim” if “it does not specify which documentation it refers to,” the ruling says.
The appeal was filed on November 25, 2020 and has been resolved almost four years later, despite the fact that the matter is not particularly complex. Judge Gerardo Martínez Tristán, appointed in 2013 as a member of the CGPJ at the proposal of the PP, like Guilarte, was the speaker in the ruling.
Practicing lawyer since 1979, the previous president of the governing body of judges is a professor of Civil Law at the universities of Burgos and Valladolid.
He is very close to Mariano Rajoy’s family due to his work as an advisor to the College of Property Registrars, a body to which the former President of the Government and two of his brothers joined. Until last September 4, he was interim president of the CGPJ, a position he reached after his predecessor retired and in a context of more than 2,000 days of blocking the renewal of this body by the PP.
Before being a director of Ibervalles, Guilarte was a member of Europac from 1998 until its sale in 2018. Together with his wife, judge Felisa Herrero, he had nearly 30,000 titles of the paper mill at the end of 2017. At the price of the public offering of acquisition (takeover) of DS Smith, those shares, 0.05% of Europac, were valued at almost half a million. Guilarte sold his securities before the offer was settled.
The lawyer also received 288,000 euros as a director of Europac only in the five years in which this company broke down its remuneration as a listed company (2013-2017), according to the information available at the National Securities Market Commission (CNMV).
In January 2021, the regulator sanctioned Ibervalles with 60,000 euros for a “very serious” infraction, failing to comply with the duties of informing the supervisor about a stake in the listed Portfolio Industrial Rea.
Participating in this investment firm, which was a shareholder of Europac and was dissolved in 2020, were, among others, Juan Luis Arregui (founder of Gamesa, former vice president of Iberdrola and main shareholder of the paper company Ence), the deceased historical venture capital and former vice president of ACS José María Loizaga, another businessman closely linked to Madrid real estate, Ángel Soria, and a well-known face, the presenter Ana Rosa Quintana.
Ibervalles, which aims for its asset portfolio to reach a value of 550 million by the end of 2025, has 25.76% of Inversa Prime Socimi, specialized in acquiring high-end homes for seniors and then renting them to them for life, and 2.99% of Árima Real Estate Socimi, dedicated to offices.
For years, its accounts have included an “account receivable” from the company Royal Class Resort SL “for the amounts contributed to the development of a real estate development that was never started” in El Plantío (Alicante). There that company, owned by local developer Manuel Ferri, promoted a golf complex and tourist apartments thanks to the fact that the Alicante council (of the PP) gave it an illegal license in 2005.
#Fictitious #rent #matriarch #illegal #deductions #judicial #blow #richest #families #Spain
