Magdalena Álvarez used to be Andalucian Minister for Taxation and Economy. She’s also up to her neck in the ERE slush fund scandal, accused of helping to skim hundreds of millions of euros from taxpayers in order to setup false pension schemes and redundancy payments across Andalucia.
Anyway, the judge in charge of the investigation slammed a bail of 29.568.129,20 euros on her last month. (Gotta love that 20 cents on the end!). Naturally enough, Magdalena said she couldn’t pay it.
She’s now had her assets embargoed, and it seems to be quite a lot for a ex-Minister who wasn’t on a fantastic salary.
She wholly owns five homes across Málaga, Benalmádena, Madrid & Sevilla, as well as a local she rents out in Sevilla.
She also has had all her Spanish bank accounts frozen, as well as some interesting ones abroad in Luxembourg and Belgium.
Magdalena is current VP at the European Investment Bank, the EU owned not for profit redistribution company. And it looks like she’s about to be thrown out on her ear after the EU told Spain it didn’t want her there any more – the national government has reached a provisional agreement with the PSOE that she should go. (Politics, eh?)
Judge Alaya of the ERE investigation team has also told nine other accused in the case that they have 9 days to provide a full financial disclosure for their assets to be embargoed, or face jail. Included in the list is the ex-regional coordinator for the Ministry of Work in Seville, Antonio Rivas, who faces a bail of 3.2 million euros.