The two investigations launched by the treaty, benefiting the brother of the President of the Autonomous Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, were closed without proving the reliability of the material supplied. Both the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office in June last year and the European Prosecutor’s Office in March this year dropped their respective investigations without having any guarantees that the Chinese factory that produced the material was accredited by their country to ensure safety of face masks to be evaluated, according to the archive decrees of both bodies. These decrees also show the lack of cooperation from the Chinese authorities. The file of the case investigating the contract that Tomás Díaz Ayuso benefited from has appeared, although it is known that at the beginning of the pandemic, numerous mask manufacturers appeared in China who, with great opportunism, sold pirated PPE to the West, based on risk to the population.
The President of Madrid defended her brother last month after learning of the conclusion of the second of these trials, assuring that it was “a devastating decision against anyone spreading insults”. However, the two investigations could not dispel any doubts about the operation involving the brother under the umbrella of a close friend, Daniel Alcázar, who sold 250,000 masks for 1.5 million euros to the community through his fashion clothing company Priviet Sporty. According to investigations by the public prosecutor, these face masks were the most expensive rooms sold to the community between March 13 and April 30, 2020 at six euros per unit including VAT.
The question of quality was relevant to the researchers because it clarified whether Tomás and Alcázar could profitably supply inferior masks. The problem starts from the moment the product was received by the community in April 2020, when the Madrid Health Service (Sermas) did not carry out any control of the product, relying on the certificates provided by Priviet. In fact, the regional government didn’t even know which factory Tomás Díaz Ayuso and Daniel Alcázar bought the material from. The two friends presented documents from a Chinese electric cable company to both Sermas in April 2020 and to the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office, which began its investigation in February 2022, and in their respective interrogations they claimed to have entered into a contract with her. However, after two months of investigation, they corrected their version. On April 29, Alcázar assured prosecutors that he had bought an aluminum factory from another Chinese company.
company with no reputation
Although there were reputable, experienced mask manufacturers in China, the two friends contacted dubious companies. Neither Chinese company appeared on the “white lists” of Beijing government-authorized manufacturers, documents released by Chinese authorities intended to prevent fraud in international purchases, according to EL PAÍS. In contrast, the second company, Zhangjiangang Xiecheng Mechanical Equipment, had a stronger showing than the first, Jiaxing Yinuo Busway, which was not even listed in Orbis, an international business database.
The decisive factor for the prosecutor’s examination was the presentation of the quality certificates of the masks from this second factory, which were considered sufficient, although their validity was not proven.
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One of the certificates was issued by China’s Shanghai Global Testing Services, but the public prosecutor’s office was unable to verify its validity due to a lack of cooperation with the Chinese authorities. In this effort, they worked with the Spanish Association for Standardization and Certification (AENOR), which tried unsuccessfully to get a response from the Chinese National Accreditation Services (CNAS). “SAHNGAI GLOBAL TESTING SERVICES CO LTD (sic), trading name GTS (Global Testing Services) has a Chinese accreditation, although AENOR has not been able to prove it, having received no response from the Chinese authorities despite multiple requests that it operates for this type of product according to the final decree put forward by elDiario.es and to which EL PAÍS had access. According to the file, Aenor concluded that this Chinese manufacturer did not have accreditation to carry out mask tests.
The other certificate is only mentioned by the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office and belongs to an Italian laboratory, Ente Certificazione Macchine, which has not been authorized by the European Commission to accredit masks and has been denounced by the European Safety Federation, the European employers’ association of PPE importers, European Safety Federation. This lack of authorization to accredit PPE can be verified in the European Nando database and was recognized by the company itself in this newspaper at the time. However, the anti-corruption prosecutor accepted this Italian certificate as good.
suspected fraud
The European Public Prosecutor’s Office, which launched its own investigation because the purchase had been made with funds from the European spring, was the one who had the most doubts about the operation due to the sudden change of version of the investigators, leading them to suspect a possible fraud. One of the reasons for this hypothesis was that Sermas knew nothing about this second manufacturer. This became clear last year when this newspaper asked the Autonomous Community of Madrid for all the documentation to purchase and received a 71-page dossier signed by Deputy Minister for Health and Public Health Antonio Zapatero, in which only the first manufacturer appeared . . When EL PAÍS published in May that President Ayuso’s brother had bought pirated masks, the community’s Twitter account labeled the news as “false,” based on the regional government’s own information.
As Alcázar explained to the European Public Prosecutor’s Office, they did not consider it relevant to notify the community of the change of supplier because they had ordered a material of a specific quality and not a specific brand.
In September last year, Alcázar presented the European Public Prosecutor’s Office with five photos from the presumed delivery date (he only mentioned some of the photos in the advanced preliminary proceedings), on which the name of the second manufacturer can be recognized. “He did not remember who had found them where, nor did he give a clear explanation as to why they had not been mentioned in any of the statements made up to that point,” the European Public Prosecutor’s Office said. Because of this, Alcázar was again summoned for explanation and asked to provide the originals, which he did in December, but he only handed over two of which the certificates attached to the boxes were not clearly visible.
Alcázar has also not provided any priviet emails with the manufacturers. The Spanish buyers approached a Korean company to buy the Chinese product, and correspondence with this Asian intermediary did not mention this second factory either (Alcázar assured that the decision to switch was made over the phone). Tomás Díaz Ayuso’s friend provided an internal email from the Korean company dated April 5, 2020, in which an attached file appeared with the seal of the alleged quality accreditor GTS on behalf of the second company, Zhangjiangang Xiecheng Mechanical Equipment.
With this, European prosecutors took it as proven that the masks were supplied by the second factory and concluded that it had Chinese government accreditation, although it was not proven that this authorization was used to validate masks.
Do you have information? Write to the author at [email protected] or via Twitter to @FernandoPeinado
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