Anti-Corruption Office investigating commissions allegedly obtained by businessmen in deals for Madrid City Council.

The Anti-Corruption Prosecution Office is investigating commissions worth millions of euros for purchases of Covid masks and other sanitary material by Madrid City Council.

Prosecutors have been investigating, since the end of 2020, commissions allegedly obtained by two businessmen who brokered the deals, El Diario reports in an exclusive today, Friday, April 1.

The purchase was made in March 2020, in the middle of the first wave of the pandemic of covid, and would have consisted of masks, antibody tests and gloves from China to protect staff working in hospitals in Madrid.

Luis Medina Abascal, son of the late Duke of Feria and Naty Abascal, allegedly received one million euros for putting a businessman friend of his – Luceño Cerón – in contact with the City Council´s purchasing managers.

Neither Luis Medina Abascal nor the businessman Luceño Cerón, who reportedly earned a commission of 5 million euros, had experience in the sanitary products market.

The Anti-corruption office is probing the two businessmen in relation to the possible crimes of false documentation, tax offences and money laundering.

Among the contracts under investigation, the first one amounts to 6.2 million euros and concerned the purchase of FFP2 and KN95 covid masks; the second, worth 4.6 million euros, was for nitrile gloves; and the third, for 3.9 million, was for the purchase of self-diagnostic tests.

Of the three contracts, “all of which were priced according to supply and demand at the time”, two of them were paid in full and a third, relating to gloves, was refunded part of the amount paid because it was not the model agreed in the purchase.

Of the three contracts, two of them were paid in full and a third, relating to the nitrile gloves, was refunded in part because it was not the model agreed in the purchase.

The municipal government of Madrid City Council has sent the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office all the information on the emergency contracts, it was reported.

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