Post by iBerotech

🇪🇸 A CEO credited with returning a company to profit is now a person of interest in a Spanish criminal investigation over the loan that funded the turnaround. Francisco Irazusta, chief executive of InfraBuild, has been identified by Spain's Civil Guard as a person of interest in a probe into a €112.8 million emergency bailout granted to Tubos Reunidos, the Basque seamless steel tube manufacturer he ran as chairman and CEO from April 2020. The loan came from SEPI, Spain's public industrial holding company, which disbursed emergency rescue funds during the COVID-19 pandemic through a process requiring Council of Ministers approval. That approval bottleneck is the structural core of the investigation. UCO report 89/2026 identifies an alleged influence network called Hirurok, said to comprise former SEPI president Vicente Fernández, businesswoman Leire Díez, and businessman Antxon Alonso, an alleged associate of former PSOE organising secretary Santos Cerdán. Investigators say the network exercised mediation capabilities to push the Tubos Reunidos loan forward, including contact with a member of the Basque Nationalist Party. A second phase of alleged activity between 2024 and 2025 targeted deferral of partial interest repayments. Civil Guard officers searched Tubos Reunidos' Bilbao headquarters for ten hours and attended SEPI's Madrid offices. The Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office is investigating alleged malfeasance, embezzlement, influence peddling, and organised crime. Tubos Reunidos filed for insolvency in 2026. Irazusta joined InfraBuild, the Australian steel distributor owned by Sanjeev Gupta's GFG Alliance, in October 2023. InfraBuild has repeatedly served as the group's most creditor-facing asset during GFG's wider financing difficulties, including the ongoing administration of its Whyalla steelworks. Reputational or governance pressure on InfraBuild's leadership complicates that position directly. The Plus Ultra airline bailout from the same SEPI fund, also under investigation for alleged political intermediation, establishes this as a pattern the prosecutorial apparatus is now pursuing systematically. #Spain #Steel #Corruption