The Constitutional Court dismantled yesterday the fiscal amnesty decreed by the PP government in 2012, voiding it and declaring it unconstitutional in a final judgment, without affecting the tax regularizations admitted by virtue of it. Among them are those that allowed the hidden fortunes of SOMA former leader José Ángel Fernández Villa, the former president of Montepío de la Minería, José Antonio Postigo, and the daughter of the latter, a total of just over 1, 8 million euros whose origin is being investigated by the Court of Instruction number 3 of Oviedo.
The resolution is not retroactive and will not alter the legalization, for Treasury purposes, of all regularization processes against which no appeal can be filed, but it does challenge the legality of the mechanism that allowed to normalize their situation, and the situation of many others - some 30,000 people - with the Tax Agency by simply paying ten percent of what it was known without criminal punishments or administrative penalties. The taxpayers who adhered to it were exempted from the tax offense, but not from further investigations on the possible fraudulent origin of their fortune or on the risk of being prosecuted for money laundering, among other criminal charges.
The amnesty was stuck yesterday in a ruling by the Constitutional Court that admits by unanimity the appeal submitted by the Socialist Group in the Congress. Basing, in part, on its arguments, it disarms the provision by form, where it understands that it is not possible to use the decree to regulate matters that "substantially" affect constitutional duties like "contributing to the support of the public expenditures", but it also makes its best efforts to disarm the arguments of the government in in favor of the amnesty.
After the hard attack of the Court, yesterday PSOE and Podemos requested the "immediate" resignation of the Minister of Finance, Cristóbal Montoro, whose explanations are also required by Ciudadanos also requires for explanations, as well as the cessation of the Tax Agency technicians collective, Gestha. Meanwhile, the government "obeys", the Minister of Justice, Rafael Catalá, said yesterday.
