It says that the budgets of the Government of Navarre are embarked upon each year. Why?
Because the money spent on the payment of public debt is around 25% of the annual budget. If the budget is EUR 4,000, almost EUR 1,000 goes directly from the debt of the Foral Government and the Spanish State – through the Economic Convention – to pay the part of the debt corresponding to Navarre. If you add to that, the tolls that are switched off are EUR 900 in total, which disappear on 1 January.

The Social Parliament is calling for an audit of public debt. What is that?
Between 2008 and 2015, public debt increased from EUR 260 million to EUR 3.3 billion. This debt was created by UPN to pay for its popular Pharaonic works and to compensate for the money that was not paid through the legendary VAT of Volkswagen. These operations involved the incorporation of a number of banks to be negotiated to absorb part of the debt: these banks lacked an interest of 5.8 per cent when the usual interest was 2.5 per cent. In this respect, in seven years we have paid EUR 67 million more.

Who should audit?
Government of Navarra. However, they say that although politically inadequate what UPN did, the debt that has been dealt with with the banks is legal, and that there is nothing to do.

If it is legal, the banks will not want to negotiate either.
Unjust debt is not a legal concept, but a social one. It is a political negotiation. Excessive interest has been paid and that is why several institutions are winning judgments. With these forecasts, a bold government would be responsible for negotiating with the banks. One example: It is up to Caixa to pay EUR 50 million on 31 October, and we understand that EUR 42 million are unfair debts. That can be negotiated, but they do not want. Then the Caixa Foundation is going to give 12 million to the government and it is going to breast feed, but it would be better for it not to do charitable works and to assume an unjust debt. They do it like Amancio Ortega, with 5 million charity and 270 million tax fraud.

You see clearly the attitude of the Government. What about the parties that support it? At the beginning of the legislature, a
working group on unfair debt was set up in the Parliament of Navarre, in which all parties participated. We went to explain it, but immediately we saw that none of the parties had any interest in auditing the public debt. All they wanted was to bring out how badly UPN had done before.

But they got a lot of information.
They do not want to do that work, but they have put the information in the hands of the Social Parliament. It's a huge amount of information, but you know we don't have the ability to analyze everything. We have seen a few things and we have seen that 191 million of the debt that is going to be depreciated in this legislature are unfair, but the government does not want to fight.

Why not?
Neoliberals. This is going against the system, and the government does not want that image to be given, which is being made against the bank as if it were a geek. This government began the legislature with a debt of EUR 3.3 billion and continues with a debt of more than EUR 3.3 billion. He has done nothing. Or yes, because he has contracted another debt to pay at the age of 15, that is, instead of paying interest at 5.8%, he pays it at 2%. It says that it saves 3.8 points, but that when the European Central Bank raises interest in a year’s time, it will have to pay more.

You work at the Hacienda Foral in the fight against tax fraud. What do you do? On the
one hand, I am behind large debtors, people and companies with more than EUR 150,000 of debt; on the other, before prescribing a debt, I look at whether everything is right for it to be so.

Does the foral government have the will to deal with tax fraud?
In the last 20 years, there has been no progress in this area. This government has done nothing different from what UPN was doing. The staff of the Hacienda Foral has not changed anything, we are 29 inspectors to follow the tax fraud. Some 330 inspections per year and per point are carried out over the last fifteen years. In this legislature, seven more technicians have been incorporated and EUR 550,000 has been recovered from the fraudulent actions carried out by the police.

In other words, there are some thirty inspectors who control tax fraud and a thousand Foral Police officers control security.
Tax fraud can only be tackled with more inspectors. In Europe there is one inspector for every 800 inhabitants, in Navarre one for every 2,000 inhabitants. To be at your level we would need at least 60 inspectors in Navarre. For a euro that is invested in a supervisor, EUR 50 comes in. There is a lot of noise when part of the tax fraud appears in the press – the famous debtors’ lists – but beware, one thing is to emerge EUR 140 million and the other to charge afterwards.