The euphoria of the commissioners of the pitch: “He takes it out”, “Good!!!”

There are more than 1,200 pages full of deceit, gossip, stratospheric figures, luxury cars and frivolous comments. It is the complete summary of the great hit that Luis Medina and his partner Alberto Luceño allegedly swindled the Madrid City Council into selling “low quality” medical supplies at exorbitant prices during the spring of 2020, in the hardest moments of the pandemic and when Every day in Spain, nearly a thousand people died as victims of covid.

Celebration

Pure euphoria for having given the ball of their lives during the worst days lived in Spain since the Civil War. The email is from March 30, 2020, in full hard confinement and only two weeks after the declaration of the state of alarm. “He takes it out,” writes Luceño minutes after the city council made the transfer to pay the contracts of nearly 14 million euros to pay for the masks and the rest of the medical supplies (tests and gloves). “Good !!!”, Naty Abascal’s son responds almost immediately. The next day, according to the judicial investigation, the two defendants received their commissions. About five million for Luceño and almost one million euros for Medina.

“Very Generous Donation”

The summary includes a letter of personal thanks from the mayor of Madrid, José Luis Martínez-Almeida, to the two commissioners for their “very generous donation”. The letter is dated April 2, 2020, three days after the consistory has disbursed nearly 14 million euros and the brother of the Duke of Feria and his friend have pocketed nearly six million euros. Almeida thanks the donation of 238,000 masks and praises the alleged altruism of the two commissions despite knowing that it is not, far from it, a gift for nothing. «This type of collaboration is, without a doubt, of great help so that the city of Madrid can face the needs derived from the tremendous health, social and economic crisis that it is currently experiencing, guaranteeing the best working conditions for its professionals» , writes the first mayor of Madrid. The existence of this letter contradicts Almeida’s version, which claimed that he had only called Medina to thank him for the donation of 183,000 masks, not 238,000 as the letter points out.

Medina, millionaire from night to day

One of the Treasury reports incorporated into the summary reveals that the son of Naty Abascal became a millionaire overnight in 2020, the year of the pandemic and the hit, multiplying the money in his accounts by 400. That year, his eleven accounts showed a balance of 2,126,727 euros compared to the only 5,379 euros that the aristocrat had in 2019, before closing the contracts with the consistory of the capital of Spain, or the 42,886 euros balance of 2018. The current balance of these accounts is 247 euros, as revealed by the instructor in the case, who has asked the parties to propose new ways to try to seize the accused given the emptying of their accounts.

Noticed in 2020

Although from the Madrid City Council in recent days they have insisted on their surprise and ignorance of the details of this case, the truth is that the council knew about this investigation for fraud for almost a year and a half. On December 22, 2020, the prosecutor who has investigated the alleged fraud, Luis Rodríguez Sol, sent a request to the entity that closed the contracts, Funeral and Cemetery Services of Madrid, revealing the main lines of the investigation, while It requested the “identity of the natural persons who negotiated” the contracts “by both parties”, as well as the “possible intermediaries” of the operation. In that letter, there was already open talk about the “existence of possible commission agents.”

Another unknown scam

The summary reveals that the consistory directed by Martínez-Almeida was the victim of another scam, apart from the one concocted by Luis Medina and his partner. The City Council paid 1.2 million euros to buy half a million masks from a New York intermediary, Philippe Haig Solomon, on behalf of the consultancy ‘Sinclair and Wilde’. However, and according to the report made by the Municipal Police, those masks lacked the “mandatory certifications”, since they only included documentation as if they were simple “cosmetic” products.

Fifteen supercars

Luceño polished off a good part of his fortune for the ball in record time, compulsively buying high-end sports cars during that 2020. In total, according to the summary, Medina’s partner acquired fifteen vehicles with the money paid by the City Council, all of them above 150,000 euros/unit. A total of 2.5 million euros was spent on the supercars. In a single day, on July 30, 2020, Luceño bought four sports cars paying in cash, including two Aston Martins. However, the most important ‘jewel’ in his collection, bought with the City Council’s money, was a Ferrari Superfast for 313,000 euros.

added fraud

Alberto Luceño not only obtained millionaire commissions for the ball with the Madrid City Council, but he could incur an alleged fraud against the Treasury when declaring those millionaire bites. Luis Medina’s partner, according to Anticorruption, created on May 8, 2020, two months after collecting the five million commissions, a company to transfer 3.3 million to this company, money that he attributed as “pending commissions” . That newly born firm invoiced 4.7 million in 2020 and paid 659,000 taxes. If Luceño, as he was required, had declared the commissions as personal income tax, he would have had to pay the Treasury more than 1.5 million euros.

Almeida’s cousin

The summary includes the recording of the interrogation at the Anticorruption headquarters, in Madrid, of Luis Medina on April 13, 2021. The aristocrat reveals that the one who opened the door of the city hall was the mayor’s cousin, whose contact was passed on by the director from his old university. It was the relative of the first mayor of Madrid who, according to the defendant, provided the telephone number of the senior official who bought the material from them. Medina’s statement, which says “no relationship” with the mayor, however, contradicts the version of Martínez-Almeida, who has sold arguing that his cousin only provided the defendants with a “generic email” to offer their services. . The summary uncovers that for eight months Luceño exchanged messages with Elena Collado, the high position of the Treasury and Personnel area of ​​​​the City Council that the cousin of the alderman presented to him. At all times, during the interrogation, Naty Abascal’s son maintains that his only relationship with the mayor was a thank you call and blames his partner for having inflated prices and deceiving him.