After years of disputes with the Tax Agency, actress Ana Duato emerged victorious last summer when the National Court ruled in her favor and acquitted her of several tax crimes related to a fraud of 1.9 million euros. Almost a year later, the challenge returns as she must once again prove her innocence before a court. The Appeals Chamber of the National Court has upheld the appeal filed by the State Attorney’s Office, which requested the annulment of her acquittal, and has ordered a retrial of the well-known Nummaria case, with a different court, against the actress and her husband, producer Miguel Ángel Bernardeu.
Regarding the main accused and considered the “intellectual author” of this tax fraud scheme against the Tax Agency, tax advisor Fernando Peña, owner of the Nummaria firm, the Appeals Chamber reduced his sentence by two years, considering that one of the tax crimes for which he was convicted is already time-barred. Thus, the sentence stands at 78 years in prison. Additionally, the Chamber orders that Peña, known as the tax advisor to the stars, a former tax inspector who served VIP clients, be retried but only for the part of being an accomplice to the acts for which Duato and her husband Bernardeu were accused.
The Nummaria case focused on the schemes Peña carried out to evade taxes through the creation of corporate structures. Among the firm’s clients were Ana Duato and her co-star in the well-known TV series Cuéntame cómo pasó, Imanol Arias, who reached a plea agreement with the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office to avoid prolonging the process. Thus, after admitting the facts and having repaid the debt of 2.23 million euros with late payment interest and civil liability, he was sentenced to two years and two months in prison, a considerable reduction from the 27 years the prosecutor requested for six tax crimes committed between 2010 and 2015.
Duato took a different strategy and faced the oral trial to defend that she had not defrauded nearly two million euros related to the personal income tax (IRPF) for the fiscal years between 2010 and 2012. During her testimony before the court, the actress stated that she was never aware that her tax returns were incorrect, as she “fully trusted” her then tax advisor, who proposed, as he did to Arias, creating a European Economic Interest Grouping (AEIE) to secure a “lifetime income,” as if it were a “retirement plan.” For these facts, the Prosecutor’s Office requested a 16-year prison sentence for the actress.
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The Criminal Chamber considered that Duato’s arguments were convincing and stated in its ruling, which has now been overturned, that it had not been sufficiently proven that “the accused knew she was failing to fulfill her duty to contribute as required by tax law.” In this regard, it indicated that the fact that she declared part of her income as employment income and another part as lifetime income did not mean “an elimination or drastic reduction,” but a “reduction of the tax quota.”
The State Attorney’s Office rejected these arguments and filed an appeal reproaching the court for giving the actress an “almost paternalistic treatment, portraying her as a mere actress apparently lacking understanding or decision-making autonomy in economic matters.” It added that expert tax advice does not eliminate her responsibility for having accepted to participate in a “fraudulent mechanism.”
The State’s legal services also directed the appeal against Miguel Ángel Bernardeu, who was acquitted because the court considered there was insufficient evidence to support a conviction, granting him the role of “interlocutor and direct information channel” for Duato. The document also pointed out that the producer was not unaware of the tax structure set up by Peña because he had at his disposal “a whole court of internal advisors within Grupo Ganga [name of his company] who also guaranteed him constant access to accounting and tax advice.”