The story of the robbery of the public line of the Madrid City Council by the agents of the commission, Luis Medina and Alberto Lucienio, has been followed by a significant revelation in the last hours and maintains several resistances. In one of the spaces left to be filled appears the General Coordinator of the City Council, Matilde Garcia Duarte, a man contacted by the Mayor’s cousin, Carlos Martinez-Almeida. Thus, according to the mayor, his right hand man and his cousin had this communication without him, until last Friday elDiario.es revealed an anti-corruption investigation.
To diminish the importance of this communication, Martinez-Almeida said this Thursday that Garcia Duarte only provided his cousin with an email address where all offers to sell medical supplies would end in the days of the pandemic, rather than a thousand, according to a consultant, and that was one of those emails. Medina attached a cell phone. Similarly, Martinez-Almeida denies that his cousin knew Medina Abascal. “These letters confirm what we said from the first minute. I was not the one who contacted my cousin. I had no idea,” the mayor added.
However, the anti-corruption prosecutor’s complaint alleges that Luis Medina used his popularity and “friendship with the mayor’s cousin, Uncle Carlos, to” contact “the Madrid City Council and offer his and Luceno’s services. Imports of medical equipment from the Asian market. “He was immediately named. [Elena Collado]”The General Coordinator of the Budget and Human Resources of the Government’s Treasury and Personnel Area of the Madrid City Council,” the prosecutor said below.
The prosecution version does not match Martínez-Almeida and the previous version, nor the version that Luis Medina offered to El Confidencial. A commission agent claims he reached out to the mayor’s cousin, Carlos Martinez-Almeida, through a man he has known for “a long time” and who prefers not to reveal his identity. “It just so happened that the man told me he knew the brother of the mayor of Madrid,” Medina said, unable to determine during cross-examination whether the contact was the adviser’s cousin or brother. The anti-corruption prosecutor’s office talks about the “friendship” between Luis Medina and Carlos Martinez-Almeida.
On the other hand, according to the procurement coordinator of the Anti-Corruption Council, Luis Medina claims that he contacted Consistory by phone and directly with Elena Collado. This Thursday, a week after information from elDiario.es, which uncovered an anti-corruption probe, Mayor Martinez-Almeida added that there are two emails from Medina to an address delivered to anyone who offered City Council medical supplies in March. 18 and 19 and that telephone contact with Collado took place later.
Elena Collado’s statement to Anti-Corruption, in which she says she does not remember who contacted her with Luis Medina, or the mayor’s comments diminishing the two emails received at the address to which the Duke of Justice’s brother wrote. They contradict compliance. Of the two purchases from Medina and Luceno, the highest was made by the Consistory during the pandemic. The City Council purchased one million KN95 masks (equivalent to FFP2) for € 6.6 million and a 250,000 antibody test for € 4.2 million.
In addition, according to the complaint, the relationship with Medina and Lucienio ended badly. Businessmen tried to sell 2.5 million low-quality gloves as agreed and 250,000 tests, mostly defective, and this led to a sharp break in the thread with the council. Luceno returned some of the gloves and hid that it was the amount of commission he was going to take.
There is another point in the mayor’s version that does not seem to fit the course of events. At a news conference this Friday, Martinez-Almeida assured: “I found out that my cousin was able to intervene in the contract as a result of information published by elDiario, which we are doing the same week. [por la pasada] This is a documentary analysis. ” However, the Consistory was aware of the highest level of anti-corruption investigations since November 2020, when it received two requests from the anti-corruption prosecution. According to the mayor, the participation of his cousin would have been foreign to him for the past 17 months. Surprisingly, he says this changed last Friday when his cousin or any relative was not mentioned in the elDiario.es information.
The first of these requests, on 26 November 2020, requested the contracts, the minutes of the Board of Directors of the Madrid Funeral Service (SFM) and the composition of the said Board. Three weeks later, the Consistory sent the documents to the specialized department for the prosecution of corruption. In the second request, on December 30, 2020, Prosecutor Luis Rodriguez Sol asked the City Council that the person coordinating the procurement provide him with his telephone and instant notifications of procurement dates, as well as messages from his corporate address. E-mail The information was sent to the Anti-Corruption Council on January 25, 2021.
A few weeks later, Elena Collado, in charge of procurement, went to testify. This whole process was followed at the highest level in the City Council, with the participation of the manager of the public company of the funeral home and other general directors of Consistory, confirmed elDiario.es from municipal sources.
Also, the City Council maintains that the municipal groups were aware of the anti-corruption investigation because they had been informed by their representatives on the Board of Directors of the Funeral Home. The opposition radically denies this issue. If so, as Almeida’s team advocates, all the opposition knew about the anti-corruption investigation on some of the council contracts during the pandemic so that it did not go beyond public opinion.
Another piece of data that the mayor was carrying out before yesterday was made public, after the contents of the anti-corruption complaint were disclosed, is that he himself spoke on the phone with Luis Medina during the pandemic. It was he who thanked the Madrid City Council for donating 183,000 masks. The mayor called an aristocratic family member because he said he personally thanked all of his creators for these donations, though he did this by emailing others.
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.
