Only his initials E.H.A.
have been released but he is in big trouble for defrauding Hacienda, the Spanish tax authority, of
451,622.68 euros by underpaying tax on alcohol in 2009. He also faces a
potential 15 months in prison. The tax must be declared and paid monthly, and
apparently the staff was told to declare much lower amounts than were in fact
leaving the premises. It seems that this continued after 2009, and a further
261,060.99 euros was defrauded in 2010, but E.H.A. no longer worked there.
According to the authorities the bodega’s books
showed that firstly sales far outweighed invoicing (demonstrating cash sales
without invoice and therefore avoidance of tax), and secondly that these sales were much greater than the alcohol
tax which was being declared. The judge said that this was “deliberate and
fraudulent” bearing in mind that the bodega had the means to pay the tax since
it is included in the sale price of the wine, but this money was “obviously
used for other purposes.”
All this only recalls to mind the sad demise of
a once great bodega which was struggling to finance its takeover of Gaspar
Florido and thus insolvent led to the suicide of its owner, Pedro Romero Candón
in 2014.
No comments:
Post a Comment