José María Ruiz Mateos
José María Ruiz Mateos Jiménez de Tejada (born April 11, 1931 in Rota ; † September 7, 2015 in Cádiz ) was a Spanish entrepreneur . During Felipe González 's tenure , his Rumasa consortium was nationalized by the Spanish government in 1983. Since then, Ruiz Mateos had filed several lawsuits to challenge the expropriation.
Life
Ruiz Mateos studied at the Escuela de Comercio de Jerez. He started his entrepreneurial career at a very young age as a wine exporter to Great Britain. Together with his brothers, he founded the Rumasa holding . At the time of the expropriation in 1983, the group consisted of 700 companies, had around 65,000 employees and an annual turnover of 350 billion pesetas: 18 banks, department stores, hotels, beverage manufacturers, agricultural companies and Spain's luxury goods company Loewe . The government justified the expropriation with the risk of a collapse of the group of companies through the constant uncontrollable acquisition of other companies and the resulting danger for the overall economy of Spain.
Ruiz Mateos fled to London in 1983 and from there to Frankfurt am Main , but was extradited by the Federal Republic of Germany to Spain in 1985, where he was charged with foreign exchange offenses, fraud and embezzlement.
After his release from prison, he founded his own party, with which he was elected to the European Parliament in 1989.
Several lawsuits against Ruiz Mateos continued. In 1995 the Audiencia Provincial de Madrid sentenced him to 3 years in prison for “concealing assets”.
During the euro boom, Ruiz Mateos founded a new holding company, Nueva Rumasa, which began to falter during the financial crisis in 2008. On February 17, 2011, the ten largest companies in the Nueva Rumasa Group were declared insolvent. In 2012, Ruiz Mateos was also charged. He was accused of withdrawing money from Nueva Rumasa in order to finance the "high standard of living" of his family. In the last few weeks of his life he was released from prison to die. Two of his sons could not attend the funeral because of their imprisonment.
Ruiz Mateos was a member of Opus Dei .
Familiar
Ruiz Mateos was the father of 13 children.
Web links
- Entry for José María Ruiz Mateos in the database of Members of the European Parliament
Individual evidence
- ↑ Spanish entrepreneur legend dead. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , September 7, 2015. Accessed September 7, 2015.
- ↑ Robert Graham: Fraudster who built a business on sherry and subterfuge , obituary, in: Financial Times , September 12, 2015 page 6
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Ruiz Mateos, José María |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Spanish entrepreneur |
| DATE OF BIRTH | April 11, 1931 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | rota |
| DATE OF DEATH | September 7, 2015 |
| Place of death | near Cádiz |