The National Court sentenced José Norberto Uzal, general director of the Local Administration of the Department of the Presidency of the Xunta de Galicia, led by Alberto Núñez Feijóo, current president of the PP, to 19 and a half years in prison. The court finds it proven that Uzal, who moved to the private sector after leaving public office in 2013, participated in a macrofraud in the hydrocarbon sector. The magistrates declare it proven that the former senior regional official, who held the position of general director of the Hafesa group, participated in a corporate operation aimed at “intentionally avoiding” the payment of over 154 million euros in VAT.
The judges charge Uzal with eight tax crimes, one of money laundering and another of belonging to a criminal organization. In addition to the prison sentence, the court imposes fines of over 140 million euros. “He held various corporate positions in different (commercial) companies that made up the business conglomerate. He appeared in the organization’s hierarchy as a transmitter of orders, and intervened in all decisions that concerned the structure of the organization and the different levels that made it up, as well as in the fraudulent dynamics that it developed”, underlines the ruling of the National Court.
The judicial resolution, to which EL PAÍS had access, places the epicenter of the fraud in the Hafesa group, a holding company of companies dedicated to the wholesale marketing of petroleum products. At the top of Hafesa was Alejandro Hamlyn, a businessman on the run from justice who jumped to the forefront of public opinion last May, when it was discovered that he had met via videoconference Leire Díez, the former PSOE militant, who suggested alleged favors of the Prosecutor’s Office if he provided data against the commanders of the Civil Guard and the Public Prosecutor’s Office.
According to the court, from Hafesa, the suspects “conceived and executed” maneuvers to “enrich themselves” illicitly. “They conceived a plan to intentionally avoid the entry into the public treasury of the VAT generated in the marketing of hydrocarbons (…), resulting from the operations derived from the deliveries of hydrocarbons corresponding to the years from 2016 to 2019”, reads the sentence, which underlines: “By incorporating the output VAT into the assets of their companies, they obtained a greater profit in their commercial sales operations, in addition to a certain monopolization of the market by eradicating, at least partially, competition from third parties, in the impossibility of offering a price equal to or lower than theirs, since the goods were sold by some subjects below the cost price.
In addition to Uzal, identified as Hamlyn’s number two in the plot, the National Court convicted 13 other people and Hafesa itself as a legal entity. The president of the business group was not put on trial because he was a fugitive.
