Judge Adolfo Carretero, who is investigating Commission agents Luis Medina and Alberto Luceño for selling defective sanitary material to the Madrid City Council at the most critical stage of the pandemic, has now decided to deal with the question of how the takeover was proposed to the consistory of the capital of this type of products during the coronavirus crisis. By an order this Wednesday, to which EL PAÍS had access, the judge has ordered the local administration to inform him if there was a “general email to receive donation proposals of sanitary material” in March 2020 and if this was the Case was used by suspected businessmen.
This is one of the key points of the case opened to fraud, money laundering and document forgery. Carretero examines how the Commission’s agents reached out to those in charge of the city’s purchasing department, with whom they developed a close relationship. Medina reported that after asking one of his former university professors for help, she put him on the phone with Carlos Martínez-Almeida, the cousin of the capital’s mayor, José Luis Martínez-Almeida. The councilor’s relative – who was summoned to testify this Thursday – later put him in touch with Elena Collado, a senior position in the consistory.
Video: EPV
But did the agents go the usual way, which was open to every entrepreneur? This point has not yet been made clear in the summary. In his testimony before the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office, Medina asserted that the mayor’s cousin put him in touch with Elena Collado and that he had “spoken” to her. Before the judge, he added that Carlos Martínez-Almeida had given him an “email” and that he believed it was the high position of the city council “who was responsible for purchases at the time”. However, after the scandal broke, the consistory claimed that the relative only gave him a general email, the same email that was allegedly given to anyone who contacted the administration about the sale of medical supplies.
Above all, however, the judge now wants to investigate after he personally questioned Podemos as a public accusation. Because of this, the magistrate is giving the city council five days to let them know if this generic email exists and “if so, provide the specific address and how it was advertised.” It also requires that the consistory deliver all emails that Medina and Luceño sent to that email and any attachments that they would have sent.
Further investigations
What affects most is what happens next. Subscribe so you don’t miss anything.
Subscribe to
Similarly, the version of Carlos Martínez-Almeida, summoned before the judge this Thursday at 10 a.m., will also be crucial. “It is practical [saber] the testimony of [primo] to know how the people examined contacted the person responsible for recruitment in the city council and whether there was any preferential treatment among them due to the intervention of Carlos Martínez-Almeida, ”the judge said last Tuesday in a car , where he concluded from calling him a defendant.
The judge this Wednesday also ordered the National Police to collect and analyze the original documents and files that the commission agents sent to their respective banks to justify the six million euros received as commissions after winning the pitch submitted in the consistory. Carretero wants his metadata examined to know when it was created and when it was modified. The anti-corruption prosecutor suspects that the papers, in which Luceño and Medina presented themselves as “exclusive agents” for the Asian company Leno, were forged.