The leader of the hydrocarbons plot assembles his ‘army’ of lawyers with a third signing

The new lawyer appeared a few weeks ago, when the businessman faces three cases for fuel fraud. In two of them he is already on the bench and the third is in its final stretch

Claudio Rivas, partner of Víctor de Aldama (EFE/Daniel González) 17/08/2026 – 05:00

New signing in the legal team of the leader of the hydrocarbons plot, Claudio Rivas. The businessman has hired the lawyer Francisco Miguel Galiana, who has joined his defense. He is the third lawyer to join his ranks, along with former prosecutor Juan Moral de la Rosa and Alfonso Rubiales. The new lawyer has appeared a few weeks ago and completes the ‘army’ of Rivas who faces three cases in the National Court.

The best known of the three is the one that also involves the businessman Víctor Aldama. The so-called hydrocarbons case is being investigated in the National Court by an alleged organisation dedicated to defrauding VAT in the purchase and sale of fuel through a network of shell companies and front men. The main focus of one of the pieces is on Villafuel, an operator that obtained authorization to act as a fuel wholesaler and around whose activity the UCO places a fraud of at least 182 million euros.

The mechanism consisted, according to the investigation, of acquiring large quantities of fuel, selling them by passing on VAT and then avoiding paying that tax to the Treasury, using shell companies that disappeared or became insolvent. The investigation, led by the judge of the National Court Santiago Pedraz, has also been reconstructing the movement and concealment of the money obtained by the network.

At the top of this network, the Civil Guard places the businessman Claudio Rivas, historically linked to the hydrocarbons business and partner of Víctor de Aldama. The UCO attributes to him, together with Aldama, management and control functions of the organization and considers that both were behind the business operations that allowed Villafuel’s business to be deployed. Rivas is also implicated in other investigations for previous fraud in the same sector: the National Court has already proposed to try him in cases related to SKT Oil and the so-called Gaslow plot, in which millionaire VAT fraud, criminal organization, falsehood and laundering are investigated.

Víctor de Aldama played, according to the UCO, an equally key role and not merely instrumental. The investigators define him as co-director of the plot together with Rivas and attribute to him the ability to facilitate contacts, open doors and use his network of relationships to favor the interests of the group. One of the most relevant lines of the case analyzes precisely the steps taken for Villafuel to obtain the necessary authorization to operate as a wholesaler, as well as Aldama’s contacts with political and government officials. The investigation maintains, therefore, that Rivas mainly provided the structure and business experience in the hydrocarbons sector, while Aldama added his intermediation capacity and his contacts, although both are placed by the Civil Guard at the highest level of the alleged organization.

In recent weeks, Villafuel has begun a process of distancing itself from Rivas. The case is already facing its final stretch and the representatives of Villafuel SL have filed a letter in which they ask its former legal and compliance team to take a statement. The company asks to summon a total of five people in order to dissociate the current management team of the company from the fraud and maintains that the purpose of these new witnesses is to verify whether the mechanisms for the prevention of fraud and money laundering implemented in Villafuel complied with the law and whether or not this model was correctly applied.

Road to trial

Rivas is already on his way to the dock in two other cases. This past June, the judge of Pedraz proposed to try him along with 15 other people for the alleged fraud of 148 million euros in the payment of VAT on hydrocarbons, between 2018 and 2021, in the so-called Gaslow case. The magistrate attributes seven crimes against the Public Treasury to them, a crime of criminal organization, continuous falsehood and money laundering. According to the investigator, those investigated were part of a criminal organization, made up of three groups of individuals, who acted in a coordinated manner and whose purpose was to use the non-payment of VAT on hydrocarbons as a commercial margin that would allow them to lower prices below those offered by the market.

A second magistrate, Antonio Piña, proposed last January to also try him in the framework of another fuel plot, in this case linked to the company SKT Oil. The fraud focuses here on the years of 2016 and 2018 and affects an amount of more than 70 million euros in the payment of VAT on hydrocarbons. The magistrate describes the fraudulent operation carried out through the hydrocarbons company SK and the concealment and subsequent introduction into the economic circuit of the illicit profits, as well as the activity related to the false invoicing used.

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