Hundreds of thousands of euros in settlements and fines from the State Tax Administration Agency (AEAT); litigation with Social Security due to a serious work accident; and veto of the Bank of Spain to the purchase of a remittance company.
They are some contentious in Spain of the Dorado-Pizzorni, Venezuelans with Italian-Galician roots and notable presence in the financial sector of Latin America. Known in Venezuela for businesses such as their remittance firm Italcambio, they own the rights to the Frida Kahlo brand or Italbank, “the most important bank in Puerto Rico,” according to their website. After bursting the Spanish real estate bubble, they launched themselves, like other Venezuelan fortunes, into the luxury segment in Madrid. The bet brought them millionaire income and the occasional lawsuit.
The latest to emerge are related to his real estate agency Italinmuebles, which in 2021 starred in one of the most media-intensive operations in recent years in Madrid: the sale, for 14.6 million, of the most expensive penthouse in the capital, a 750 m² triplex. , including 200 m² of terrace, in the former Azucarera headquarters on Montalbán Street, 11, in the Los neighborhood Jerónimos.
It was the icing on the cake of the luxury rehabilitation they carried out in a building acquired in 2016 from Ebro, whose shareholders include the State. The exclusive promotion of ten homes sold out in eight months. The triplex (five bedrooms, seven bathrooms, robotic garage for four vehicles, 360º views of the Cibeles Palace) was the last unit to be sold. “It includes a spa, Turkish bath, swimming pool and Technogym gym,” it said. Telemadrid in April 2021, after being purchased by a Central European family. It was the first operation in Madrid that exceeded 20,000 euros/m².
By then, the AEAT was already well advanced in a complex inspection of the main manager of Italinmuebles, Maximilian Pizzorni, son of the late founder of Italcambio, Mario Pizzorni, and brother-in-law of the best-known member of the family, the Galician-Venezuelan Carlos Dorado.
The Treasury inspection led to a claim of more than half a million to Pizzorni between liquidation (369,684.48 euros) and penalties (163,919.92 euros) for personal income tax from 2015 to 2018, which the Regional Economic-Administrative Court (TEAR) reduced by annulling the liquidation and the 2016 sanctions for having expired. But the bulk of the minutes have just been confirmed by the Contentious Chamber of the Superior Court of Justice of Madrid (TSJM).
According to the ruling of September 16, the AEAT noted that before Pizzorni’s move, Italinmuebles had had “intense” activity. In 2015 it already had a turnover of more than 9 million, it had rehabilitated a building on Velázquez Street, in the heart of Madrid’s Golden Mile, and sold some of the apartments, “without the entity having dependent personnel.” The Inspection asked “whether the beginning of the employment relationship is business-justified.”
His conclusion was that he was not and that the employment contract that Pizzorni used to act as manager of the family business was a simulation; that this relationship was commercial and not labor and there was a link prior to their move. Furthermore, Pizzorni was not just another employee: before moving to Spain, he already managed Italinmuebles. He served as secretary of the board and legal representative and directed the human resources, financial and commercial areas. Functions that, according to the Tax Agency, “exceed those of a common worker.”
He was also a shareholder, although a minority; there was “an evident connection due to kinship between the partners”; and had lent money to Italinmuebles (1 million euros) to finance its projects. “Every year” his salary was “at the threshold of 600,000 euros”, the limit to pay taxes at that 24%. But “the method of calculating the resulting remuneration has not been justified,” determined the AEAT, which denied him those tax advantages and sanctioned him for appreciating negligent conduct.
The TSJM has endorsed the settlements and fines of 2017 and 2018 because “clearly” the reason for his move “was not found in the employment contract signed with Italinmuebles SL” and he did not meet the requirements for that special regime.
The ruling, which is subject to appeal, rejects, as Pizzorni argued, that the AEAT was “bound” by granting this special regime, because it cannot carry out an “exhaustive” prior verification of those requirements and discovered the fraud after an investigation that lasted years. . Among other things, due to the “complexity” of a procedure in which the AEAT had to make information requests to the United Kingdom and Puerto Rico and due to the “repeated” refusal to provide documentation from Pizzorni, which did manage to overthrow the liquidation and the sanction related to the 2016 financial year for having expired.
With a meager workforce, Italinmuebles had a turnover of 22.6 million in 2021, the last year in which it presented accounts in Spain, and declared a profit of 2.89 million, according to data from Insight View. Pizzorni was its administrator since it was created in 2013. First alone, and then with his sister and brother-in-law. The company moved to Malta, one of the most opaque territories in the EU, in June 2022, in parallel to the TEAR resolution now confirmed by the TSJM.
Without harness
That same body, in this case the Social Chamber, rejected another appeal by Italinmuebles last June against the decision of the National Social Security Institute (INSS) to increase the surcharges on the company’s contributions by 30% in 2019. a serious work accident.
In March 2018, a subcontracted worker in an Italinmuebles development fell from a height of three meters while working on the construction of two luxury villas with a surface area of 700 m² and a plot of 2,500 m² in La Moraleja, another of the most expensive areas. from Madrid. “A pure and serene home with warm and welcoming spaces,” reads its website.
The worker, who was around 60 years old at the time of the accident, was recognized as having total permanent disability in September 2019. “He lacked training,” and had not received information about the risks and “the mandatory use” of the fall arrest harness. that he did not have, according to the final ruling of the 22nd Criminal Court that convicted in April 2023 of a crime against the rights of workers in competition with another of reckless injuries to the general manager of one of the subcontractors, Molior Construcciones y Urbanismo, also with Venezuelan capital.
In this procedure, the affected party waived civil and criminal actions after being compensated with 29,331 euros by the accused, the subcontractor and the insurer. In May 2018, the Labor Inspection considered “the lack of coordination in risk prevention” an “indirect cause” of the incident and fined Italinmuebles 6,000 euros as the promoter company, in addition to applying the surcharges that the company appealed in court. , so far without success, suing the INSS and the subcontractors.
Added to these setbacks is the ruling of the National Court that in July 2018 confirmed the Bank of Spain’s decision to veto Italcambio’s purchase of 67.25% of the remittance company Mundial Money Transfer, known as Mundial Envoys, in 2016. which in 2017 suspended payments after acknowledging “lack of veracity” and “falsified” notes in its accounts.
The supervisor ruled that the Venezuelan holding company lacked “suitability” based on reports from the Money Laundering Prevention Service (Sepblac). This organization warned that the buyers, Maximilian and Gabriela Pizzorni and her husband, Carlos Dorado, were linked to businesses exposed to “risk of money laundering” by operating from several tax havens; and that Pizzorni had been disqualified in July 2010 by the Venezuelan National Securities Superintendency (SNV) to operate as a financial intermediary. Also taken into account was the confiscation, in December 2003, of a shipment of 2.5 million dollars in cash at the Caracas airport from an Italcambio company. The news of the veto was reported in September 2018 by El Confidencial, although it is no longer available on its website.
The use of signatures in tax havens is very common in the family. Along with Italbank, the other partner of Italinmuebles was Management Trade Agencies INC, from Panama, where they manage several companies. Dorado (65 years old) and Gabriela Pizzorni (72) run firms in Spain such as Enhaut Ventura, Nigitmar Investments, Bauli Investments or New Charlotte SL, moved in 2011 from the Virgin Islands, a stone’s throw from Puerto Rico. Its headquarters, on Velázquez Street, is the same one that Molior has had since 2023, the subcontractor for which that injured worker worked.
Dorado is quite well known in Venezuela. Columnist for years in El Universal, his personal website defines him as “businessman, economist, visionary and faithful believer in entrepreneurship as a fundamental part of the social development of a country.” Born in Forxa, a village in Ourense, he emigrated as a child to Venezuela with his parents, from very humble origins. After studying Economics, he went to work at the Italo Venezolano bank. He ended up marrying the daughter of the founder of the entity, which was very successful in those years, given the large community of immigrants of Italian origin there.
In 2018, the Venezuelan media ArmandoInfo defined Dorado as “the businessman who plays with fire”: “He went from being the opponent persecuted by Chavismo to the accommodating businessman who moved to the opposite sidewalk.” In addition to financial businesses, he manages companies related to real estate, fashion (the Casablanca textile company, which he launched in the late 80s in association with the Galician Adolfo Domínguez) and the exploitation of the Frida Kahlo brand, an artist whose existence he learned about in 2003. : At their offices in Miami “an employee came to work wearing a T-shirt with the printed face of a horrible lady smoking a cigar. And who is that woman? Frida Kahlo, he answered me. “And who is Frida Kahlo?” she told The World in 2007.
He didn’t know who she was, but he smelled the business and in 2004 he created, together with the painter’s then only heir, his niece Isolda Pinedo, a company in Panama, Frida Kahlo Corporation, to exploit the brand. First it was tequila, then Barbie dolls, Converse sneakers, beers, clothes… Pinedo died in 2007 and Dorado has been fighting for more than a decade with Kahlo’s heirs over the rights. But that’s another story.
#Treasury #fines #work #accident #lawsuits #Venezuelans #expensive #penthouse #Madrid
