Exolum (formerly CHL), the hydrocarbon giant which controls practically all the fuel that circulates in Spain, enters the scene in the legal battle opened before the National Court by the so-called Hydrocarbons affairwhere magistrate Santiago … Pedraz investigates alleged million-dollar VAT fraud for which he appears to be under investigation Víctor de Aldama – already prosecuted for the Masks affair to the Supreme Court, alongside former minister José Luis Ábalos and his former advisor Koldo García.
The hydrocarbon operator Villafuel SL, which is one of those investigated in this case, sent the judge two writings in which it indicates that, taking into account the operation described by the Central Operational Unit (UCO) in its reports, it wishes that the Exolum Corporation SA all delivery orders from 2022 to 2024 prove that fuel orders have been placed, delivered and received.
He thus wants to demonstrate that there was a real deal between the Exolum supplier of its tax warehouses and the wholesaler Villafuel SL. From this company, they have maintained since the beginning of the case that The alleged fraud does not exist and they acted in accordance with current legislation.
In this sense, the company under investigation also requests that two employees of the former CHL -Carlos Molina and Iago Solla- after understanding that they could provide relevant data on the fuel transportation giant’s relationship with the operator.
These requests from the legal defense of the operator are added to those recently known and in which they asked the magistrate to ask the Tax Agency complete and detailed file for granting the authorization and registration of your company in the Register of Tax Deposit Extractors (REDEF). He also wants the official who participated in this case to be located so that he can be summoned to testify.
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On the other hand, and with the aim of tackling the UCO’s assertions regarding obtaining its operator license – they regret that the Judicial Police maintain that Villafuel “did not respect, in its opinion, the appropriate financial or legal resources to obtain this qualification” – requests to be summoned to appear as a witness. Marc Isaac Pons, former chief of staff to Teresa Rivera, then Minister of Ecological Transition.. The defense indicates that at the time the operator’s license was granted, she was part of the minister’s team and intervened in the process of Villafuel obtaining the wholesale operator’s license for fuels and petroleum fuels and other corresponding procedures.
The quote from Juan Ignacio Díaz Bidart, then chief of staff of the Ministry of Industry and this, in his opinion, can clarify “if there was institutional mediation or if what happened with them was a simple administrative procedure”.
To these two summons are added those of María del Mar Delgado and Rafael Romero, both of Madel Asesores, consultant hired by the operator for the drafting, supervision and presentation of the project obtaining the operator license.
It should be remembered that in this alleged VAT fraud plot in the hydrocarbon sector, the UCO places Víctor de Aldama as the main ringleader alongside his associate Claudio Rivas. He attributes both to the veiled control of seven intermediary companies that, through the use of frontmen, allegedly served as vehicles to commit a million-dollar VAT fraud: Obaoil 3000, Salamanca Fuel Center, Canary Islands Fuel Company, Cismar Hidrocarburos, Carburantes Jalón-Plaza, Skyward Tech and Espaeventos.
The defense thesis of Villafuel, as ABC learned, is that through these companies, Rivas and Aldama instrumentalized the operator to acquire fuel in a tax warehouse which they then sold to distributors and service stations without declaring the corresponding VAT to the Treasury.
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