Nine Tax Agency officials arrested for charging in exchange for issuing falsified official certificates

A total of fifteen people are in prison after being arrested in the framework of a police operation that has uncovered a network, headed by a group of officials from the

, which was allegedly engaged in fraudulently issuing and selling tax documents. .

The suspects issued certificates of economic solvency, fiscal residence, removal of liens or deferral of debts, among others, for which they allegedly charged fees ranging from fifteen euros to several thousand euros depending on their type.

Although so far the investigation remains under summary secrecy, the justice system accuses them of a continuing crime of falsehood in a public document, bribery, fraud, money laundering and crimes of an economic nature derived from the alleged use of the certificates that were issued illegally. .

More than a million, according to sources consulted by EL MUNDO.

Some of these documents have been proven to be directly false;

Others have been dispatched in breach of current legislation, since at the time of carrying them out some of the procedures required by law have been omitted, they have been carried out without taking into account the determined deadlines or simply, they have been issued outside of them.

Of the 31 detainees, nine belong to the basic scale of the

, but there are also advisers, managers, businessmen and individuals, as confirmed from the environment of the investigation instructed by the

.

Among them is the wife of one of the public employees investigated who, although she is not a worker at the Tax Agency, took advantage of the facilities that many

employees had to carry out their tasks from home as a result of the coronavirus pandemic - and the different confinements decreed by the Government to stop its expansion - and allegedly used the codes that they provided to her partner to prepare some of the documents in question herself.

The solvency certificate of a company that participated in a public bidding process in Madrid -and which turned out to be false- set off all the alarms and put the Treasury on the track of the fraudulent certificates.

The Tax Agency, in addition to initiating an audit to find out what was happening, filed the corresponding complaint with the

, coordinated by the prosecutor

.

In December 2021, the public ministry began an investigation in coordination with the Internal Audit area of ​​the state administration itself and the

(UDEF).

The plot now discovered apparently worked like a real criminal organization, say those who have had the opportunity to learn about its operations.

The "boss" of the network was the one who allegedly received the job applications, was in charge of distributing the tasks among the officials involved, collected the payments from the clients and finally paid each of them their part based on the documents made. on every occasion.

And in this way, the researchers believe, they may have been acting for several years.

To discover who is who in this network and what the dynamics of the network are, as well as to determine responsibilities, the seized devices (mobile phones, computers and hard drives) are proving key in the different searches carried out by the agents in the first phase of an investigation that they never thought would have the dimensions that they have verified that it has and much less that it would involve so many people, including officials with a long career in the administration.

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