Compromís reports Canet's PSOE to tax agency over cash payments
In Canet d'En Berenguer, next to Sagunto in Camp de Morvedre, Compromís has reported the local PSOE (Socialist Party) to Spain's tax agency and an anti-fraud watchdog over cash payments above the legal limit between 2023 and 2025.
In Canet d'En Berenguer, a town next to Sagunto in the Camp de Morvedre district, the political party Compromís (a left-leaning Valencian coalition) has filed a formal complaint with Spain's Tax Agency and the Valencian Anti-Fraud Agency against the local Socialist Party (PSOE). Compromís says the PSOE group paid several invoices in cash to justify grants it receives as a council group, in a way that may break the national law on cash payments.
The case started when Compromís councillor Albert Valls noticed that an invoice used to justify the 2025 grant had been paid in cash for more than €1,000, the legal limit. After he asked for a review, the council's internal auditing office (Intervención) opened a financial control process that was later extended to cover 2023 and 2024 as well.
That €1,000 limit comes from a national law, Law 11/2021 of 9 July, on measures to prevent and fight tax fraud, which lowered the general cash-payment limit between businesses and professionals from the previous €2,500. This is the exact threshold that Canet's internal auditors believe the local PSOE group may have broken.
According to the auditors' conclusions, seen by Compromís, the PSOE did provide four extra invoices for 2025, each one below the legal limit on its own. The problem is with 2023 and 2024: when asked for similar proof, the socialist group did not provide it. Because of this missing paperwork, the auditors concluded that the cash-payment limit may have been broken — a breach the law classifies as serious.
The same report makes clear that the process for granting and justifying these subsidies followed the rules correctly, so this is not a case of public money being misused, but a possible problem with how it was paid. For that reason, the auditors have passed the case to the Tax Agency, the body in charge of investigating and, if needed, punishing this kind of breach.
The disputed invoices relate to expenses at a company where Canet's mayor used to work years ago, according to the file. The maximum grant this council group can receive for this purpose is €3,500 a year, an amount set by a council plenary agreement on 21 June 2023.
Compromís has pointed out that the PSOE is the only council group that has requested this grant every year since then, and called it concerning that there is no clear explanation of where the money actually went.
The complaint was not only sent to the tax office. Compromís also reported the case to the Valencian Anti-Fraud Agency, an independent Valencian Community body that works to prevent and fight fraud and corruption in public administrations, including running internal whistleblowing channels. Its involvement adds a separate layer of oversight alongside the national tax authority.
For residents of Canet, the case draws attention to a mechanism that rarely gets public scrutiny: grants that councils give to their own political groups for running costs such as office supplies or communication. These are small amounts compared with the overall municipal budget, but controlling them matters because it is public money managed directly by the parties themselves, without the outside checks that apply to grants given to other organisations.
It is now up to the Tax Agency to decide whether to open a formal inspection and, if so, to set the scale of any penalty, since Law 11/2021 classifies breaking the cash-payment limit as a serious offence. At the same time, the Valencian Anti-Fraud Agency can independently assess whether there are signs of wrongdoing beyond the tax issue, a separate review that does not depend on the tax authority's findings or timeline.
The case adds to the routine scrutiny that opposition groups apply to the finances of smaller councils in the Camp de Morvedre district, where grants to council groups tend to involve modest sums but are subject to the same controls as any other public spending. According to El Periódico de Aquí — Sagunto / Camp de Morvedre, with additional information from Spain's Official State Gazette (BOE) and the Valencian Anti-Fraud Agency.