SGAE against some of its partners when they understand that there are not "enough elements to maintain their perpetration". However, the Office of the Public Prosecutor of the Community of Madrid has referred the case to the Tax agency in case "a tax violation could be derived", informs that institution in a note.
The complaint by a Alleged tax evasion of tax evasion Through the use of screen societies, according to different sources, legal entities representing the interests of artists such as Pau Donés, Joaquín Sabina or Alejandro Sanz.
According to the complaint of the SGAE, explains the note of the Prosecutor's Office, the legal services of the management entity had detected that "some of its partners ceded their copyright in favor of an assignee and a publisher, which became the new holders of copyright and, therefore, in new members of the SGAE after their corresponding registration ".
The Office of the Public Prosecutor of Madrid has sent the case to the Tax Agency in case "a tax violation could arise"
Then add the complaint, the assignee and the publisher "signed an administration contract with a large publisher for the management, administration and representation of 100% of copyright."
For the legal services of the SGAE "in no case there was the cession of the copyright of the transferee and publisher to the publishing house, but the administration contracts materialized with the creation of two entities without legal personality, new partners of the SGAE, which nevertheless operated with the CIF of the publishing house ".
Thus, as stated in the complaint, the author then requested the SGAE to prepare invoices issued by entities without legal personality and "not by the transferee and publisher (titular partners of the rights)."
In the opinion of the SGAE, through this activity would be issuing invoices "with falsified data" and "could be trying to hide from the tax administration the true beneficiaries of the settlements for copyright and thus the taxation that could correspond".
In spite of everything "only one author is mentioned, who would be carrying out the operations described," recalls the Prosecutor's Office, which, at the time, confirmed to EFE that one of the aforementioned was Joaquín Sabina.
Further, Pau Donés It showed in a letter its "stupefaction" because the use of societies for the collection of copyright denounced by the SGAE "suggested, approved, agreed and practiced for more than 20 years" the entity itself.
The Office of the Public Prosecutor indicates in the brief made public today that "the tax declarations presented by the authors or by the assignee entities of their intellectual property rights do not appear". "Not even", he stresses, does it consist if the invoices issued in the way described have been used to hide "the identity of the true beneficiary of the copyright settlements" or the amount of the same.