The Court of Accounts imposes on Vox a fine of 862,000 euros for irregular financing | Spain
The Court of Accounts has imposed a sanction of 862,496 euros to Vox for incuring a infraction considered very serious, related to the origin of the private donations that it received during the 2018, 2019 and 2020 years. Already in July the Supervisory Body detected similar irregular practices by Vox, imposing on this political formation a fine of 233,324 euros. In less than a year, therefore, said party has added in sanctions 1,095,820 euros for prohibited actions for the legislation on financing of political parties. Vox has announced that he will present a resource.
The last resolution of the Court of Accounts – which has had a particular vote of two counselors – explains that it imposes the aforementioned Vox sanction for having breached the Law of Financing of Political Parties, having accepted cash and unidentified donations. The reports of the Supervisory Body on the analyzed triennium – from 2018 to 2020 – highlight that Vox received more than 330,000 euros through ATMs, income attributed to “promotional activities”. The Court of Accounts already warned as a result of its first investigations that Vox was incurring an « absence of controls » in its income, making it difficult to verify what the real origin of donations was.
The new sanction imposed on Vox is appealed to the Contentious-Administrative Chamber of the Supreme Court. Abascal’s formation has confirmed that it will present this resource, for estimating that the fine received is « unfair » and is an incorrect application of the legislation on party financing. Vox argues that the supervisory body ended up previously archiving other similar investigations on their sources of financing, and believes that the annulment of the current one and the sanction of last year can obtain in the Supreme.
The reports of the Court of Accounts, however, stress that « the nature of the accounting records for income from promotional activities that have promoted to 311,947.05 euros in 2019 has not been verified, since they have not contributed justifying them. » It is added in this regard that this balance « has been collected in cash through ‘informative tables’ and entered in the bank accounts of the formation through successive automatic cashier tickets. » The inspection body also emphasizes that « the training has not provided justification documentation that allows verify 81,578.69 euros and in donations for 83,952.55 euros ”.
In the same way, the Court of Auditors makes the decision to sanction Vox’s conduct given that “the accounting record of private origin is carried out through aggregate amounts seats that hinder the identification of individual origin, nature and monitoring of this type of income, as well as the verification of compliance with the regulations applicable to them”. In this regard, the Political Party Financing Law provides that they « may receive non -finalist, nominative, money or in kind, from natural persons, within the limits and in accordance with the requirements and conditions established in this law. » And he adds that « the donations received in accordance with the provisions of this law, which will be irrevocable, must be used to carry out the activities of the donor entity. »
In the whole of the three years analyzed, and for various concepts, the amount entered by Vox through ATMs was more than 434,000 euros. This figure is the one that determines the amount of the sanction imposed. It is the aforementioned Law on Financing of Political Parties that provides that the amount of the sanction for very serious infraction must be located in no less than double the amount that exceeds the legal limit. It is found that, in effect, the fine imposed is within the forecasts of the law itself. Among the sanctioned irregularities, the Court of Accounts also states that the « absence of controls in the sale of lottery participation » is.
