Almeida's right-hand man denies preferential treatment to commission agents: "The same treatment was done"

Matilde García Duarte, general coordinator of the mayor's office of the Madrid City Council, testified as a witness for almost an hour and a half before the judge of the case masks. The video of his statement, to which elDiario.es has had access, shows how José Luis Martínez-Almeida's right-hand man distanced the mayor from any management related to the purchase of material from Luis Medina and Alberto Luceño. The two, as he explained, reported that they had renounced charging commissions and even boasted of selling masks to the German government, something of which there is no record.

García Duarte began by explaining his relationship with the mayor and his cousin, Carlos Martínez-Almeida. “The mayor and I are from the same promotion, I have known him since 2001, and I have known Don Carlos for 15 years, he is a friend”. The mayor's cousin contacted her, she explained, to say that "she had a person who offered the possibility of selling sanitary material and how we did it." She has reiterated several times, told him that she had to send her offer to the generic mail of the general coordination of the mayor's office that handled her team.

The video of her statement shows the surprise of the judge in the mask case at various times, when she explains that in a telephone conversation with Luis Medina, the aristocrat stated that "he had an import company and that he worked with the governments of Germany and the United States." . She also did not hide her surprise when the mayor's general coordinator revealed that Elena Collado, responsible for purchases, stated in an email that the two businessmen had "resigned" from charging commissions and that they had "behaved very well."

The judge asked Matilde García directly if, in the case of this purchase of material, something different from other similar processes was done. "Nope. The same treatment was carried out, it was treated in a homogeneous way”, she said, comparing this procedure to that of “tens or hundreds” of similar contracts. She also stated on several occasions that she never spoke to the mayor about this: "No, nothing at all," she explained to the magistrate.