The railway, a multinational construction and infrastructure company that has announced its departure to the Netherlands, has not paid corporate tax since 2020, although it has received more than a billion in public contracts during the Pedro Sánchez era, according to figures filed in its annual accounts. Mercantile Register. In the past decade, the group headed by Rafael del Pino has paid this tax only three times: 2014, 2018 and 2019, as can be seen in the annual accounts of the parent company and confirmed by official sources.
In the remaining fiscal years of those years, the multinational got away with paying the losses registered in Spain and using the tax credits, thus seeing that their account with the treasury was reduced. Investigators with decades of experience point to this group and the Del Pino family as paradigmatic examples of tax fraud, as they have always found tricks to pay minimal taxes.
Conversely, it should be noted that Spain is a crucial market for this multinational. As Ferrovialis admits in its most recent annual report, 18% of the sales that took place in 2022 will come from our country, only after 21% from Britain and 36% from the US and Canada. In other words, Spain is the third market in the world for the Del Pino family, and Public Sector contractors on the roster also benefited from this information.
More than 1,000 million dollars in public contracts
Since June 2018 (when Pedro Sánchez was first promoted to the Palace of Moncloa) to the present, the companies of the beneficiary group of public contracts have been worth 1,014.9 million in cash from different companies and public bodies assigned to the Ministry of Transport; Mobility and the Urban Agenda.
The railway infrastructure was the main source of income in Spain for the company. Adif was its biggest employer, paying up to 731 million to the Railways for different works and infrastructure. In second place and far behind is Aena, the company that manages the majority of Spanish airports, with more than 164 million. In ports and highways the prizes are not so high, as they have 87.9 and 31.8 million coins respectively.
If the benefits are broken down by year, 2019 was the period in which multinationals benefited the most, with 425 million cash in prizes. 2020, on the other hand, was the weakest year with 22 million coins. In the next available year, which is 2022, the presence of European funds is marked and the benefit rose to 322.7 million. Indeed, in the same presentation of the financial results in which the owner of the company announced the intention to move the business headquarters to the Netherlands, an allusion was made to the total income, in 2022, of 7551 million. Doing the math, the Ministry of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda was the architect of more than 4% of the Railway’s earnings last year.
A decade of relationship with Administrations
The history of the railways with the Spanish Administrations goes back to distant times, but the records of the Public Sector contractors on the roster date back to 1991. From that time, the awards of the Railways by the Ministers of Development (the name given to them in each legislature) are about 9,000 million of cash, more specifically 8,868 . In the early stages of the company, they worked as road and port contractors, but gradually broke out into the railway and airport sectors.
The many revolutions of public affairs which Spain has passed through, did not seem to affect the state of this society, which has always benefited in the public domain. However, the economic misfortunes that the country has gone through are reflected in its accounts: in the first decade of the 21st century, the annual average in contracts from 400 million, up to 785 in 2007, the year before the economic crisis. In the following years, when its effects began to be felt, the sums decreased somewhat: between 2013 and 2018, no year exceeded 103 million awards. 2016, with only 32 million, was the worst year of the decade.
The anger expressed by the Government with the departure of this company is understood by these facts: decades of public contracts with multi-million dollar figures and the maintenance of a privileged status through various laws. The Minister of Transport, Raquel Sánchez, contacted Del Pino for comment on this move, according to sources from the executive. The owner of this portfolio, Del Pino, asked to extend “details and information” about his plan to go to Belgium, with emphasis on “giving protections to preserve employment and investment work in Spain”.
