Luis Medina and Alberto Luceno declare this Monday before Judge Adolfo Carretero for the collection of commissions amounting to six million euros thanks to the alleged irregular sale of masks, Covid gloves and tests to the Madrid City Council when the pandemic broke out, at which time speculation in the market blocked the arrival of medical supplies.
The instructor investigates a complaint from the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor for the alleged commission of crimes of aggravated fraud, false documents and money laundering, Events that the magistrate sees as “serious” as they took place “at the height of the pandemic” when there were “thousands of deaths daily.
Prosecutor Luis Rodríguez Sol, who signs the complaint, maintains that the commission agents, with the aim of obtaining “an exaggerated and unjustified economic benefit”offered the Madrid City Council the possibility of acquiring “Large shipments of medical supplies made in China”.
Naty Abascal’s son, as an intermediary, obtained a commission of one million euros, which he used to purchase a sailboat for €325,515 and two investment bonds worth each of €200,000.
The summary of the investigation uncovered that days after receiving the transfers from the Malaysian company Leno, the aristocrat transferred the money to an account in the Netherlands, leaving one of his accounts practically empty and another in the red.
In the complaint, the prosecutor requested the seizure of the sailboat and the bank accounts. When the judge verified that he had less than 250 euros, At the request of Anticorruption, he proceeded to set a bail of 981,000 euros, in which case of non-payment, the hereditary rights of the person under investigation will be seized in relation to the inheritance of his grandmother, the Duchess of Medinaceli.
Medina is also being investigated for the alleged commission of a crime of lifting of assets after the magistrate verified that the investigated person made dispositions of his bonds and assets since April 13, 2021, the date on which he was summoned to testify before the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office.
Only the sailboat registered in Gibraltar and a current account with a positive balance of 247.26 euros to cover civil liability for the alleged crimes investigatedwhose amount in his case amounts to 1.2 million euros.
“Commission within normal”
Medina’s role in the purchase-sale operation is that of a facilitator, as he himself stated during his statement before the prosecutor. He was the person who contacted the Consistory, taking advantage of his status as a public figure and “his friendship with a relative of the mayor of Madrid”, according to the prosecutor’s complaint. She was given the name of Elena Collado, General Coordinator of Budgets and Human Resources of the Government Area of Finance and Personnel of the Madrid City Council.
Elena Collado is summoned to testify on May 9 as a witness. The PSOE has asked the judge to cite her as being investigated so that she has “an adequate defense.”
In his statement before the prosecutor, Luis Medina stated that the mayor of Madrid, José Luis Martínez-Almeida, “called or wrote to thank him” for the donation of 283,000 masks in the worst moments of the pandemic, stating that he “has no relation” to him.
“I of the total amount if you add it up, between what he takes and what I take, I take less than 10% commission, which is within normal,” he stressed then.
Already in the framework of the instruction, the investigated complained in a brief presented by his lawyer Carlos Texidor that the judge accept the presence of the Madrid City Council in the case as the injured party, as well as the company of the municipal funeral home, by agreeing in two cases with the contracts investigated.
“The matter was closed and the City Council was satisfied with the solution, so now they cannot come to complain about something that they considered valid and for which they did not file any type of claim, quite contrary to what they did with the Sinclair company, which they denounced for not having sufficient quality of the masks purchased, “said the lawyer.
Luceño, the negotiator
To Alberto Luceno he is being investigated for being the person in charge of the negotiations with Elena Collado, to whom he presented himself as a “expert in importing products from the Asian market, with factories in China at your disposaland as the exclusive agent of the Malaysian company EEE, through which the importation was to be carried out”.
“In reality, he neither had significant experience in import business nor did he have factories in China, in the same way that he was not the exclusive agent of any Malaysian company nor did he act out of any altruistic intention,” according to the Prosecutor’s Office. According to research, Alberto Luceño received a total of 5,100,000 dollars -4.6 million euros- as commissions, through transfers sent from Malaysia to a personal account.
With this money, the businessman paid for a stay in a hotel in Marbella at a cost of €60,000; three Rolex watches; twelve luxury vehicles and a house in Pozuelo. Regarding the investigated, the judge has already proceeded to block three bank accounts and cards worth almost €130,000as well as the seizure of the luxury home he purchased. The commission agent recognized before the anti-corruption prosecutor that he acquired luxury cars as a form of “investment” to sell them later. “We have sold three already. Part of them are investment cars, we bought them because they were worth 700,000 euros, 800,000 euros and we got them for 399,000“, he assured during the investigative proceedings.