‘The director’s newsletter’ is a weekly letter from Ignacio Escolar exclusively for members of elDiario.es in gratitude for their support, with keys, data and personal recommendations. If you also want to read it and receive it every Saturday in your mailbox, become a member, become a member of elDiario.es
Miguel Ángel Rodríguez, MAR, went to ‘Everything is a Lie’ this week and fulfilled what the program announced: he lied non-stop. He was also in the Supreme Court and did the same, with the aggravating circumstance that there he was legally obliged to tell the truth. Before the judge, MAR assured that elDiario.es had not contacted him before publishing our first exclusive on tax fraud. It was false, as always.
Our colleague José Precedo has provided evidence of that conversation before the Supreme Court – as they requested –: the screenshots of the messages he exchanged with Miguel Ángel Rodríguez and which demonstrate that Ayuso’s chief of staff lied before the judge. Of course we ask before publishing our research. Of course we tried to obtain, through MAR, the president of Madrid’s version of the events, just as we also contacted her partner, Alberto González Amador. We always do it: not only because it is the right thing to do but because it is demanded the Statute of elDiario.es.
First we contacted Ayuso’s press chief – who did not answer the phone – and then with the chief of staff, his main advisor. MAR received our questions: “Did Isabel Díaz Ayuso know about the tax fraud that the Tax Agency attributes to her partner? Did you have any information about his participation in the presentation of false invoices? Has the president of the Community of Madrid bought any real estate property with her current partner? And one last question, the most important: “Who pays for the home where the president of the Community of Madrid resides and how many properties are there?”
MAR sent us off with a cocky attitude: “What you say is very serious (…) you will see.” He never answered what we asked him. Neither he nor Alberto González Amador nor anyone in the Community of Madrid. They still don’t do it today.
Nine months have passed since that investigation and MAR, for now, has gotten its way. Their strategy is that of the squid: black ink lies with which to divert attention. That is why for months the public debate – and the judicial debate – has revolved around this alleged crime of revealing secrets of which the State Attorney General is accused of dismantling one of MAR’s hoaxes.
It is the usual strategy. It is the same thing that he did when elDiario.es uncovered that a childhood friend of Ayuso, from his town, had taken a million-dollar contract for masks hand-delivered by the Community of Madrid; a public award for which Ayuso’s brother charged a commission of 234,000 euros. At that time, Ayuso denounced alleged espionage by his party through private detectives that was never heard from again – because it simply was not true. That ended as it ended: with Pablo Casado thrown from the highest floor of the PP headquarters to the street by his own faithful – Bruto, Vellido Dolfos, Cuca Gamarra… -, with Feijóo as the new leader of the opposition and with Justice filing the investigation. There was no crime, according to the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office. That the government you preside over awards a contract of 1.5 million euros to a friend of your people and that your brother takes the commission is, in Ayuso’s Madrid, something very normal.
With his partner’s tax fraud, the strategy is repeated. Because it works. Ayuso presents herself again as the victim of a conspiracy, despite the fact that no one in the Prosecutor’s Office or the Tax Agency – until the investigation by elDiario.es began – knew that this Alberto González who had deducted 1.7 million of euros with false invoices was also the person who pays for the luxury home where the president of the Community of Madrid lives.
But you have to leave the ink and focus on the squid: on the elusive being that tries to escape by diverting attention. And here the key is that, the house. Or rather the houses, because there are two of them. An apartment on the sixth and a penthouse on the seventh, in a luxury building in one of the best neighborhoods in Madrid.
The data. The sixth floor – 186 square meters of housing and another 25 square meters of common areas – is in the name of Alberto González Amador. He bought it on July 27, 2022, for an amount that would then be around 900,000 euros. Then he carried out an illegal renovation, which, as a perfect metaphor for Ayuso’s Madrid, flooded the restaurant on the ground floor of the building with sewage, which had to close. For some unknown reason, Alberto González Amador did not enter the purchase in the registry until a year later: July 19, 2023, after the last regional elections.
Around that same time, after finishing the renovation, Alberto and his partner, the president of Madrid, moved to live there.
But this floor is not the only one. There is another one. On July 21, 2023, two days after the first house was registered in the registry, an enigmatic company, Babia Capital SL, bought the apartment just above it, the attic. It is a little smaller, 155 square meters of housing plus another 21 square meters of common areas according to the cadastre, but it has a huge terrace where a Spanish flag flies that can be seen from the street. Its price in 2023? It would be around a million.
As confirmed by neighbors and other sources who have been inside the house, the couple uses both houses: the sixth and the seventh. The downstairs, for everyday life. The one upstairs, for sports – there is a small gym –, leisure and visits. Between both floors, plus the attic terrace, they add up to about 380 square meters in total.
Fact: the average size of a home in Madrid is 82.9 square meters.
The administrator of Babia Capital, the company that owns the penthouse, is called Javier Luis Gómez Fidalgo. He is a well-known tax lawyer in León. And coincidentally he is also a lawyer for Ayuso’s partner. Alberto González Amador appointed him as his representative before the Tax Agency in 2022, when the tax investigation against him began.
To put it more clearly: the president of the Community of Madrid lives in two apartments that an average Madrid resident would take several lifetimes to pay for. The first is from a tax fraudster, his partner. The second, from a company managed by the lawyer of that same fraudster. Everything normal? Of course not.
There are more strange data in everything surrounding the fortune of Alberto González Amador, from whose economic fruits Isabel Díaz Ayuso benefits. When the courtship began, the related press presented him as a “health technician.” Now Miguel Ángel Rodríguez defines him as a “brilliant manager.” Soon he could be the businessman of the year, or a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize.
The reality of his biography? Just five years ago, Alberto González Amador worked as a technician specialized in occupational risks. He was dedicated to providing occupational health and safety recommendations for companies. It’s not a bad job, but it doesn’t provide many luxuries; neither for penthouses nor for Maseratis. Then he lived with his wife and three children in a 90-square-meter apartment in Barajas, near the airport, in the Alameda de Osuna neighborhood. There the houses are worth on average half as much per square meter than in Chamberí.
González Amador was already working then for the Quirónsalud Group: the private healthcare giant, the company that invoices the most in the Madrid public healthcare system. But with Ayuso’s courtship, his career and income skyrocketed.
After beginning the romantic relationship with the president of the Community of Madrid, the Quirón group’s payments to Alberto González Amador multiplied by four. And all the big businesses that have made this “health technician” rich have a name in common: that of Fernando Camino, one of the main directors of Quirón.
Fernando Camino is the president of Quirónprevención, the occupational risk company of this group, for which Ayuso’s partner subcontracts. But Camino’s relationship with González Amador goes much further than that of a simple supplier.
Ayuso’s partner managed a company in Panama, which was created by Fernando Camino. And the big hit from Ayuso’s partner – almost two million euros in commission – was for mediating the sale of an order worth 42 million between a Catalan company, FCS Select Products, and another Galician one, Mape. And who is one of Mape’s administrators? Indeed: Fernando Camino, the president of Quirónprevención.
Just a few months after that hit, at the end of 2020, González Amador launched a very strange operation. He paid half a million euros for a company with hardly any activity and that invoiced less than 30,000 euros per year. It was a price that was clearly inflated, according to the Tax Agency itself, and was not justified by any realistic indicator. The company was called Circulo Belleza SL and it managed a small beauty treatment shop, next to a pharmacy in León. The owner of the company – and the pharmacy – who earned half a million euros? She was the wife of Fernando Camino, the director of Quirón.
Alberto González Amador not only paid an exorbitant price for this irrelevant company, whose business did not have that value – so much so that, after purchasing it, he renamed it with a bombastic name: Masterman & Whitaker Medical Supplies and Health Process Engineering SL -. That same company is the one that González Amador later used as a “mere intermediary company,” according to the Treasury inspection. A shell company, one of those that MAR says do not exist in this case.
Through this same company, for an entire year, Alberto González Amador also paid for the rental of a BMW car, which was in the name of Fernando Camino’s wife.
Everything passes through León, where Camino’s wife’s pharmacy is. And the company that wasn’t worth half a million. And Alberto González Amador’s tax lawyer. And your tax advisor. And the company that owns the penthouse the couple uses, Babia Capital, is also from Leon.
It is an attic that contains one more secret.
Shortly before Babia Capital bought that home, in July 2023, someone lent 955,000 euros to this company; money that presumably was used to pay for the attic.
Who put up that money? Where did it come from? It was not a bank: no loan or mortgage appears in Babia Capital’s accounts. It was another company, or a private person.
This is undoubtedly Ayuso’s best kept secret: who financed that second house in which she lives, that penthouse for which she still does not give a single explanation.
Someday, hopefully in 2025, elDiario.es will discover it.
A hug,
Ignacio School
PS Happy 2025, by the way. It is a year that at least I will never forget because in a few months I will receive important news. One of the best and it makes me very happy. My wife is pregnant again and we are expecting a girl; the third after two children. We are going to be a large family, with all the hassle that that entails. When that day comes, of course, I will take paternity leave again: because no one is essential and because the earthquake that awaits us at home will not be easy. During that time I will disappear completely: I will not work on radio or television either. Neus Tomàs will replace me again as acting director and I’m sure he will do great again. I hope you understand my absence and are happy for me.
Source: www.eldiario.es
