The PSOE has filed a complaint against Vox before the State Attorney General’s Office for irregular financing, considering that it used methods to raise funds in an opaque manner, as reported by the party in a statement and confirmed. elDiario.es.
The socialists presented the complaint last Friday, December 13 after having made an “exhaustive” analysis of the financing of the far-right group led by Santiago Abascal and have concluded that it could be committing a crime of illegal financing of political parties.
They point out in the writing that at least since 2020 and until today, in the information tables that Vox deploys throughout the Spanish territory, a series of elements to capture economic income were incorporated in the form of “piggy banks” or “ safes”, along with a series of merchandising objects “with the aim of raising cash funds in an absolutely opaque way”.
An “absolutely irregular” practice in the opinion of the socialists that could have raised 5 million euros, according to data obtained from the annual accounts that Vox publishes on its website, they point out. Along with the complaint, the PSOE provides the images that Vox has been publishing on its different official social media profiles since 2020 of its information tables in an annexed document of more than 100 pages.
In its writing, the PSOE emphasizes that donations received both in piggy banks and through promotional sales are not justified with minimal accounting, which would contravene regulations, which prohibit anonymous donations that can be used to hide illegal forms of financing.
The writing emphasizes the donations received by the far-right party in 2019, when private donations to Vox exceeded the total sum of donations from the rest of the parties, as reported by elDiario.es. Already in its 2020 report, the Court of Auditors detected possible illegal donations to the party that would later result in a financial fine of more than 200,000 euros.
The socialists defend in the 50-page document that Vox introduced a “systematic, organized, widespread and continuous form of financing” whose beginning they place in 2017 and which “has been maintained over the years.” until today” and has meant “very high income” for political formation.
They also request that a statement be taken from Santiago Abascal, president and legal representative of the party, Juan José Aizcorbe, manager of Vox until 2023, as well as the current manager Javier Cortés, and the treasurer Pablo Sáez.
In the complaint, the party also includes the loan of 6.5 million euros granted by the entity MBH Bank Nyrt, a Hungarian bank whose main shareholder is the Hungarian state fund, and asserts that Vox would have tried to hide it in its accounting and that ” “It would violate financing regulations again.” The state fund Corvinus International Investment owns 30% of Magyar Bank Holding (MBH), linked to this loan.
The Party Financing Law expressly prohibits its financing by Governments and foreign agencies, entities or public companies or companies directly or indirectly related to them.
Vox spokesperson, José Antonio Fúster, refused in a press conference to give more information about this financing and assured that the origin of this credit “is known by whoever has to know, the Court of Accounts.” After this information, the Hungarian research outlet Vsquarepointed directly to a financial entity: MBH Bank, “a financial giant formed from the merger of three entities” and which is partly “owned by Lőrinc Mészáros, the richest businessman in Hungary and a childhood friend of Orbán” , as indicated in this publication.
These circumstances, the socialists insist in their complaint, could “hide irregular financing flows between the European parties” of the extreme right and that belong to the European Parliament group called Patriots for Europe, created around the party of Hungarian President Victor Orbán, in which Vox has recently integrated and which has elected Santiago Abascal as its presidentpresident of the Spanish party.
Vox attributes the complaint to an attempt to divert attention
Vox spokesperson in Congress, Pepa Rodríguez de Millán, attributed this Thursday the complaint filed by the PSOE against her party for irregular financing to an attempt to “divert attention from its corruption cases.”
In statements to the media in the Congress hall, Rodríguez de Millán insisted that the Court of Accounts already has the information on the matter. Vox sources have alleged that the amount of 6.5 million euros is a loan and that it would have already been returned.
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