The Prosecutor's Office requests nine years in prison for Luis Medina and 15 years in prison for Alberto Luceño for the operation they carried out to sell medical supplies to the Madrid City Council in the midst of a pandemic and in which they inflated prices taking advantage of the material shortage situation that there was at that time, mainly masks.
After the closure of the investigation, the public ministry wants both partners to sit in the dock for fraud and documentary falsification. In addition, Luceño adds another crime of falsehood and one against the Public Treasury.
In addition, he claims joint and several compensation from the Municipal Company of Funeral Services and Cemeteries of Madrid in the amount of nearly six million euros. Luceño, for his part, would have to compensate the Tax Agency, in 1.3 million euros.
According to the indictment, in the second half of March 2020, in a situation of rapid evolution of the pandemic caused by COVID-19 and extreme need and lack of sanitary materials, Luceño, taking advantage of the fact that he knew a A businessman in Malaysia who could supply these products, went to Medina so that, since he was a well-known person in Spanish social life, he would look for and facilitate contact with possible public institutions interested in acquiring this material.
With the above information and through a mutual friend, Medina managed to contact a relative of the mayor of Madrid, José Luis Martínez-Almeida, who provided him with an address for the General Coordination of the Mayor's Office of Madrid to whom he could direct his offer.
Luis Medina sent an email to this address on March 18, 2023, offering various medical supplies (protective suits, masks, COVID antibody test, disinfectants). In this message, Luis Medina stated that he was selling this material to various European governments and that he worked directly with the factories, "which turned out not to be true."
"From this moment, the intention of both defendants was to exaggerately enrich themselves at the expense of the aforementioned situation of extreme need and lack of sanitary materials, selling the products for a price much higher than what was offered by the suppliers, and this as a consequence of the imposition of exorbitant commissions that were kept hidden at all times from the buyer, whom they convinced that they were acting for altruistic reasons, without obtaining any benefit from the operation.", the prosecutor maintains.
On March 23, 2020, Alberto Luceño introduced himself to Elena Collado, director of the public company, as an expert in importing products from the Asian market, with factories in China at his disposal. Likewise, he said he acted altruistically, motivated by the desire to collaborate in the fight against the pandemic.
"In reality, he neither had significant experience in import business nor did he have factories in China, in the same way that he did not act motivated by any altruistic intention," adds the prosecutor.
The partners won three contracts worth nearly $12 million. "These prices were imposed by Alberto Luceño on the Madrid City Council, saying that it was the price set by the exporter. In doing so, he hid that a high percentage of the final price offered (approximately 60% in the case of masks, 81% in the case of the case of the gloves and almost 71% in the case of the tests) corresponded to commissions that the defendants were going to receive," he points out.
