The path toward the closure and liquidation of the aluminum plants once owned by the American multinational Alcoa in Avilés in Asturias and in La Coruña has unfolded in two acts. The first phase drew particular attention when an obscure Swiss mutual fund, Parter Capital Group, entered the picture with influences reaching Germany and the United Kingdom. In the second phase, attention shifted to Victor Ruben Domenech, also known as David Domenech, and his former spouse and partner Alexandra Camacho. National Court investigations allege negligent administration in relation to these operations as they affected the liquidation process.
first stage
Parter Capital Group, a fund managed by a German citizen named Rudiger Terhost, appears to have acquired the factories with Alcoa’s involvement. In June 2021, the Social Division of the National Court issued a judgment that remains under review by the Supreme Court. The ruling highlights two renewable and reimbursed loans extended to the buyer, along with financial support to the purchasing entities, totaling 15 million euros. The handling of these funds and their movement within the European monetary system becomes a recurring focal point in the resale chain from Parter to David Domenech’s corporate holdings.
The National Court’s wording also notes that Parter’s placement of the 15 million euros was not openly disclosed. The core issue is the loan policy, secured through pledges on two fixed-term deposits held by Alcoa Inespal Avilés and Alcoa Inespal La Coruña, the two factories once known as Alu Ibérica. The court states that the instruments used by Parter, described as the blue movement, were designed to deposit funds into the accounts of Alcoa Inespal Avilés and Alcoa Inespal La Coruña so the buyer could assume commitments for these assets. The shares were later transferred to a third party, Grupo Riesgo. The sentence ultimately signals a pattern of Alcoa taking control once again.
second stage
The cash movements that characterized Parter Capital’s involvement were scarce again when Parter decided to resell the factories it had acquired just months earlier, first in July 2019 and then in April 2020. The asking price of 13.5 million euros becomes a central issue in the National Court investigation prompted by the Confederation of Staffs, reinforcing the sense of questionable transactions around the sale.
Bankruptcy managers overseeing the San Balandrán plant, led by Oviedo attorney Miguel Gomez Gordillo and the GdP bankruptcy office, describe the second operation in a report to the Commercial Court No. 1 of Oviedo. The document documents the liquidation of the aluminum company that entered the Avilés area in the mid-1950s. Through 2023, the region is recalled as a landscape of deserted ships and mountains of paperwork in courts and in political offices, with memory clinging to a rapidly fading industrial past.
The bankruptcy managers’ filing asserts that when Domenech and Camacho took control of Alu Ibérica, they paid for the company’s shares in a move that violated the general prohibition on providing financial assistance to a third party for the purchase of the company’s own shares or those of its parent entity. The filing adds that the necessary funds for share trading were entirely issued by the acquirer and coordinated by the seller and recipient, with the operating companies in Avilés and La Coruña involved in the related activities.
In essence, no cash was laid on the table by the buyers, yet the 13.5 million euros initially contributed by Alcoa to support an industrial plan to preserve the plants vanished, including the core assets but excluding the fixed assets such as buildings. The striking feature of these two factory transactions, which cost the jobs of hundreds of workers in the region, is that they occurred without the buyers contributing their own money; in other words, the capital came from other parties, not the buyers themselves.