Getting masks or gloves during the first weeks of the pandemic was not an easy task. It was not for citizens to go shopping and there were no public administrations to blindly go to the wild international market. In this sea of Persian contracts, suppliers and markets, two businessmen approached the Madrid City Council and promised that they would be there to help fight the pandemic and bring medical supplies from China to protect municipal personnel. In fact, Luis Medina, the regular pink press, the son of the Duke of Feria and Nati Abascal, and his then-friend Alberto Lucheno, had no experience in the Asian market, but they received millionaire awards from the government. Jose Luis Martინnez’s Almeida’s finger contracts, which handed them € 6 million in commission from the public line. The percentage of this profit exceeded 400% of the value of some products.
According to a complaint by the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office, as a result of the investigation revealed by elDiario.es, it was Luis Medina Abascal, a regular representative of the Pink Chronicle, who contacted the Madrid City Council. He enjoyed both his fame and his friendship with the mayor’s relative, according to a complaint cited by municipal sources as Carlos Martinez Almeida, a lawyer by profession, a cousin of the high priest with whom he shared vacations and vacations. . According to the story in the complaint, Medina contacted a senior Treasury official in the local government and since then the reins of negotiations have been in the hands of her then-friend, Alberto Luceno Seron. The businessman, who has been working for almost three decades, said that “the action is motivated by a desire to cooperate in the fight against the pandemic.”
According to the prosecution, very few things were true because his real goal was to become a millionaire with the material needs of the Madrid administration. He managed to pay a very high price on three contracts awarded with fingerprints, gloves and antibody test by the Capital City Council, a municipal funeral services company, and paid a commission of € 6 million to the budget. For him and Medina. “These prices were set by Alberto Lucienio and set by the Madrid City Council,” the prosecutor’s office said. And thus “hid the fact that the high percentage of the price offered (about 60% in the case of masks, 81% in the case of gloves and almost 71% in the case of tests) corresponded to the commission that the defendants intended. Acceptance. “
Contracts were hand-drawn through a public company running a municipal funeral home that did not have to announce a competition as a government-imposed alarm allowed various administrations to ease controls to expedite the arrival of doctors. The material was approved by the hospitals. According to consulted sources, the Almeida government has appealed to the public funeral company to be able to prepay part of the payments, which is much more difficult for the administration.
The mask contract was the most voluminous. A total of $ 6,689,300 for one million FFP2 masks. Of that amount, one million was given to Luis Medina Abascal and three to Alberto Lucienio, though he hid a significant portion of his bite from his partner. The commission agreed between the two was one dollar for the mask sold on each of them. We do not count the extra, which Luceno himself rewarded.
The calculations of the anti-corruption prosecutor are clear: with a commission of four million, the real price of the product was $ 2.6 million. This means that they charged 148% of the actual price of the commission product. They were of good quality, say the prosecution, but with a large bonus. “The seller would be willing to sell at a much lower price than they paid; Specifically, 40% of the Sakrebulo payment, ”he said.
As elDiario.es explains, the Court of Auditors has already analyzed these contracts without knowing that the commissions were hidden in solid prices, which also attracted the attention of the anti-corruption group. This purchase of masks cost 6.24 euros per unit, which is twice as much as in Barcelona (2.50 euros), 50% more than in Seville (4 euros) and four times more than in Zaragoza (1.60 euros).
Luceno and Medina also received a 250,000 antibody test from the same Malaysian company to purchase the Madrid City Council for $ 4,250,000. The contract that strongly attracted the attention of the Court of Auditors: it came out at 16.03 euros per unit, twice or even three times more than in other large municipalities. But he also had a small print: Alberto Lucienio was set to take in a $ 2.1 million commission, while Luis Medina was set to raise $ 915,000.
Luceno once again hid part of his bite from his partner and forced him not to take part of it and kept the $ 3 million. According to the prosecution, therefore, he took 3 million out of 4 million 250 thousand contracts: the product was actually 1.2 million dollars and took 244% commission.
In this case, moreover, the tests that the Malaysian company collected in China and scored in Madrid were mostly defective. Only 75,000 had an “acceptable” level of sensitivity, prosecutors said, and the rest were low. The council, in fact, demanded the return of their money and the return of part of the lot to the seller. Instead, Luceno promised that they would send a new reagent to the fluids to correct this lack of test sensitivity, which never happened.
The third contract was to buy 2.5 million pairs of gloves for five million dollars, a pair for two dollars. The gloves, which, in the beginning, were “the lowest quality gloves and only reached the wrist,” the prosecutor’s office said when it needed to cover a good part of the council arm. In addition, the official who was dealing with them realized one thing: in Spanish supermarkets, these gloves were sold to the public for not eight dollars, but for eight euro cents.
The contract was canceled, the gloves were returned and the commissions were not collected, but according to the prosecution, it turns out that Luceno and Medina had new plans. Initially, Luceno told the council that the supplier had agreed to a significant price reduction and that they intended to return the money. The reality is that the two businessmen agreed to share a commission of four million dollars. 426% of the gross product. However, in this case, the cancellation of the operation due to the volatile material sent by them put an end to what would have been their biggest blow in the process of this public contract.
The anti-corruption prosecutor’s office understands that this whole operation could have been aggravated fraud in the public treasury of the Madrid City Council, at a time when health authorities in Spain were counting hundreds of deaths a day. But he also attributes to them the crime of money laundering and other false documents. Money laundering, as elDiario.es explained, comes from the massive purchase of expensive cars, watches and even yachts, presumably to allow legal payment of the commission booty. Document forgery arises by using forged documents to justify their commissions.
Two agents of the commission received a call from the bank when millions started coming to their account from Malaysia. According to prosecutors, Luceno submitted a 2018 letter in which he was named as the exclusive agent of the Malaysian company Leno, another similar one from 2019, and both were signed by the directors of the said company. “None of these documents are authentic, but they were prepared by Alberto Lucienio,” and one of the signatures on the paper, “imitated by Alberto Lucienio himself,” the prosecutor’s office said.
Luis Medina Abascal also received a similar call from her bank when her million dollars arrived in Madrid. He had to justify the origin of the money so that it was a commission from a public contract and called Luceno, who sent forged documents that he presented himself, but including his partner. “These documents are not authentic either, but they were prepared by Alberto Lucienio from the documents that he himself submitted to his bank,” the prosecutor’s office said, adding in this case the signature of Luis Medina, which he himself sent to him by mail. .
Source: El Diario
I’m an experienced news author and editor based in New York City. I specialize in covering healthcare news stories for Today Times Live, helping to keep readers informed on the latest developments related to the industry. I have a deep understanding of medical topics, including emerging treatments and drugs, the changing laws that regulate healthcare providers, and other matters that affect public health.
