Javier Fernández-Lasquetty, during his time as Acting Minister of Economy, Finance and Employment of the Community of Madrid.Alejandro Martínez Vélez (Europa Press)
“Has your income improved compared to your last phase as a director? [cuando cobraba más de 100.000 euros brutos anuales]?
-Yes.
Javier Fernández-Lasquetty (Madrid, 57 years old) answers EL PAÍS's questions in writing with the condition that his answers are reproduced in full. Three months have already passed since this law and political science graduate, who, together with Enrique Ossorio, was the ideological lighthouse of the first governments of Isabel Díaz Ayuso, left politics. And he didn't waste any time.
During this short period, he was appointed president of Cofares Diversificación, a subsidiary of the pharmaceutical distributor Cofares. Member of the Board of Directors of Morinvest, the investment company chaired by Alicia Koplowitz; joined the Advisory Board of Sagardoy Abogados; He has taught in various master's programs at various universities; and has just signed for the board of a municipal company in Las Rozas, where his PP party has governed since 1995. For this activity, he receives 1,183.23 euros net as a daily rate for each of the approximately ten meetings. According to a spokesman for the company, you have to attend every year.
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“Mayor [José de la Uz] “He asked me to join a board of directors made up of business leaders,” explains Fernández-Lasquetty. “What interests me about Las Rozas Innova is that it serves to promote start-ups and connect them with companies looking for innovation. I think I can help the council strategically manage the activity to this end,” he continues. “I don’t know everything about diets,” he adds. “I didn’t ask, nor did they tell me. I don't know anything about her, so I don't even know if I'll notice her. Of course, the amount you mentioned is no reason for me to have accepted the mayor’s proposal.”
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However, his entry into this public company shortly after leaving the regional administration did not leave the left opposition indifferent.
“The privatization gurus of the PP follow the same scheme: with one hand they dismantle public services, with the other they squeeze the money of every single resident of Madrid to put it in their pockets,” says Manuela Berguerot, the chairwoman of Mas Madrid. in the regional assembly. “Lasquetty was the guru of the privatization of public health and these dusts, these waiting lists. Today he receives a reward of 1,200 euros in expenses for every meeting he attends at a listed company,” he adds. “The People’s Party doesn’t have a problem with the public, but rather a problem of hypocrisy: what bothers them is that the money ends up in health and education and not in their gadgets and contracts.”
“We will monitor his work,” they warn the leadership of Juan Lobato’s PSOE. “We demand complete transparency about their work and participation in the company’s activities,” they emphasize. “Innova currently has hardly any business and the majority of the regular budget goes to the human resources chapter,” says the PSOE of Las Rozas.
Javier Fernández Lasquetty, with Esperanza Aguirre and Ana Botella in a photo taken during his time as Minister of Health (2010-2014). ULY MARTIN
Lasquetty reached this point after a political life full of milestones, controversies and reforms. He was Minister of Immigration and Cooperation (2007-2010) and of Health (2010-2014) under Esperanza Aguirre, a position he left due to the mobilization of the white tide of health workers who protested against his commitment to the private management of the New public hospitals. He then devoted himself to intellectual life at the University of Francisco Marroquín, the temple of liberalism in Latin America, where he learned that the Constitutional Court endorsed the private management model of public hospitals that he had introduced in Madrid, and learned that Nobel Prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa He took him in the acknowledgments of his book Tiempos recios.
This dedication encapsulates the predicament in which Fernández-Lasquetty finds herself in the liberal world. This is even more true since Díaz Ayuso brought him back into active politics in 2019 and tasked him with cutting as many taxes as possible. “His mission is to implement policies of tax reduction and economic liberalization,” his official profile as an adviser states. He acted accordingly: he reduced the income tax with a reform worth 300 million, which particularly favored high incomes, and lowered it with the same consequences to combat inflation. eliminated the nominal self-taxes that the region still maintained; and designed an income tax bonus to attract 30,000 assets from abroad, with the guarantee that around 245 million would be saved. Although this last tax cut was not approved due to Vox's refusal to support it, it is now being implemented thanks to the absolute majority of the PP.
Since Fernández-Lasquetty has been strengthened by this biography, to which he was, among other things, Secretary General of the FAES and Deputy Director of the Cabinet of former President José María Aznar, it is easy to imagine that he will accept the left's criticism of his move Innova listened to Las Rozas with a certain indifference. As a lover of baroque scores and a regular at the National Auditorium, the former city councilor says he has heard this music before.
“The PSOE has been criticizing me for 15 years,” summarizes Fernández-Lasquetty, who claims that he now works the same twelve hours a day as before. “If they continue to do this, it is probably due to their unfortunate inability to do or say anything new.”
They say that Fernández-Lasquetty said goodbye to a group of deputies from other parties with a polite message in which he pointed out, by the way, that he had not suffered any reason for incompatibility by signing for Morinvest, Alicia Koplowitz's SICAV . This has nothing to do with his performance as Minister of Economy, Finance and Employment of the Government of the Community of Madrid, I said. Not before, not now, not tomorrow.
– Does it leave the door open for a third return to politics?
-NO. I left politics of my own choice and will not return there.
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