Soledad Fernández Doctor has been away from the leadership of the State Tax Administration Agency (AEAT), of which she was director for four years, for less than a week. However, speculations about her departure remain alive, some of which reappeared this Monday in the Senate Investigation Committee on the management of the State Industrial Holdings Company (SEPI). “Do you want to leave because you are aware of all this and they have not let you act?” asked the PP senator, Salvador de Foronda, referring to the indictment of former Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and the jewels worth more than one million euros that were seized from him. “That is not the case. I wanted to leave this position long before. This had nothing to do with my decision to leave the post,” Fernández Doctor replied firmly during a hearing that became tense at times.
The former director of the Tax Agency clarified upon arrival that there would be topics she would not answer “due to confidentiality” and a “possible crime of revealing secrets.” A position that prompted the intervention of the committee’s lawyer and its president, Ana María Beltrán, urging her to “cooperate.” This start marked the entire first part of the hearing, in which PP senator Foronda repeatedly asked why the Tax Agency did not initiate actions against Zapatero earlier, insinuating that the decision was intentional and responded to pressures.
“The leadership of the AEAT, the leadership of the Ministry of Finance has not done its job,” accused the popular politician. “I do not agree at all with what you say. We have done our job, we have done what we had to do,” Fernández Doctor rebutted. When asked if all of Zapatero’s assets are being investigated, the State Tax Inspector answered affirmatively. “It is our obligation,” she said. “We have continued investigations and have made decisions at the time we considered appropriate,” she added.
Asked about the fact that Julio Martínez, the businessman linked to Zapatero and indicted in the Plus Ultra case, did not file income tax returns for years despite receiving payments as an administrator, Fernández Doctor admitted not understanding why control mechanisms were not activated. “If we had that data, I do not understand why it did not trigger in our mechanisms,” she said. “If it happened, it is a regrettable error,” she added before revealing that an action related to the businessman has already been taken: “I have already said enough.”
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Speculations
Speculations about internal movements in the Tax Agency began in early July, when it became known that both Fernández Doctor and two other senior AEAT officials, the directors of Collection and Financial and Tax Inspection, had requested to leave the agency. The news gave rise to several conjectures, which saw in the triple replacement reasons more political than personal, such as the tension caused within the Agency due to the unique financing of Catalonia or the indictment of José Luis Zapatero in the Plus Ultra case.
“The reasons for my resignation are complex,” Fernández Doctor assured in her appearance before the committee, recalling that her departure had been decided “a long time ago,” to the point that she had communicated it to the former Minister of Finance, María Jesús Montero, agreeing that the dismissal would take place after the income tax campaign ended. “I have little time left until retirement and I want to decompress a little after so many years of work,” she clarified.
Regarding the other two Agency directors, she explained that they have participated in a competition to be transferred to the financial departments of embassies. “In these months five of them will become vacant, due to the expiration of the terms of the people who were occupying them,” she detailed. “These two people decided at the time, in spring I believe, to apply for those positions which are, frankly, attractive. What I know is that they have applied. Still, as far as I know, it has not been resolved.”
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