The European Public Prosecutor investigates several Ayuso COVID contracts to companies outside the health sector

The European Public Prosecutor's Office has opened an investigation into several contracts awarded by the Community of Madrid to buy medical supplies in 2020 from two companies completely unrelated to the health sector. The community body, after two complaints from the United We Can group in the Community of Madrid, has agreed to investigate possible crimes of fraud against European funds in the award of seven contracts for 18 million euros to buy medical supplies from two non-health companies: one was dedicated to wine with gold and another to the audiovisual sector.

The European Prosecutor's Office that wants to investigate Ayuso's contracts, a new body cornered by the whipping of the Gürtel

Know more

According to the documentation to which elDiario.es has had access, the Ione Belarra party has denounced, on the one hand, three contracts awarded between March and April 2020 to the company Vin Doré 24K for 7,744,000 euros. The three to acquire different types of sanitary material for pavilion 10 of the IFEMA fairgrounds, where the Community set up a warehouse "that served health centers, residences, town halls and other public spaces throughout the Community of Madrid", according to collects the memory of IFEMA of that year.

The second complaint for which the European Public Prosecutor's Office opens an investigation is for four contracts awarded to Air Global Media for a total of 10,660,500 euros between April and June 2020. Contracts, likewise, to bring surgical material to the IFEMA warehouse and also to supply health centers in the Community of Madrid.

Neither of the two companies, as the complaint explains, are dedicated to the health or textile sector. Vin Dore 24Kwhich according to the contracting portal has been the subject of up to six contracts for the supply of sanitary material worth more than 17.5 million euros in the Community of Madrid, is dedicated, as explained on its website, to marketing luxury wines with particles gold in suspension Air Global Mediaaccording to its website, is dedicated to the audiovisual sector and 'big data'.

United We Can has taken the case to the European Public Prosecutor's Office which, after verifying its competence in dealing with contracts financed with community funds, has decided to open proceedings. It does so by explaining that, according to what is contained in the complaint by the political party, a possible crime of fraud against European funds can be intuited, but it says so without failing to emphasize that for now it only has what is stated in the complaint and that the “outlines” of the facts are, for now, “fuzzy”.

In both cases, the European Public Prosecutor's Office launches proceedings, demands from United We Can all the available documentation and explains that, for the moment, it refuses to make any accusation to avoid rushing. As the proceedings progress, the European Public Prosecutor's Office explains in these writings, it will decide whether someone should be called to testify.

Alejandra Jacinto, deputy of United We Can, understands that this initiative of the European Public Prosecutor's Office again targets Isabel Díaz Ayuso, the president of the Community of Madrid, "While Mrs. Isabel Díaz Ayuso tries to entertain us by generating headlines about censoring textbooks, The European Public Prosecutor's Office opens an investigation for the award of million-dollar contracts to two companies that, without having experience in the sector, received millions of euros for the purchase of medical supplies due to the alleged commission of a possible crime of fraud against the Union's budgets European and scam”, he says.

The parliamentarian also adds that, in the case of the Popular Party, there is "a pattern" according to which the PP "understands institutions as spaces to irrigate related companies and entrepreneurs with public money, whether in the Madrid City Council or in the Community".

Conflict over his brother's contract

It is not the first time that the European Public Prosecutor's Office puts the magnifying glass on suspicious contracts of the Community of Madrid. This community body has already had a conflict with the Spanish Prosecutor's Office to investigate the contract that the regional government awarded to the company of a personal friend of the president, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, with the intermediation of her brother, Tomás de Ella, as a commission agent. A contract that as revealed by elDiario.es in Novemberwas awarded for 1.5 million by hand to Priviet Sportive, a company owned by Daniel Alcázar, a friend of the president and her family since childhood.

This case was an unprecedented conflict between prosecutors after the internal war in the Popular Party emerged intervention and commissions the brother of the regional president. The first to take charge of the matter was the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office in Madrid after the complaint by several political parties, but a few days later the European Prosecutor's Office claimed to take over the investigation using the same argument that it uses now: that they are contracts financed with European funds.

In her case, the attorney general, Dolores Delgado, convened the board of courtroom prosecutors that decided unanimously support the proposal of the anti-corruption chief, Alejandro Luzón, to stay with the cause. That decision resulted in several statements from the European Public Prosecutor's Office showing his opposition to the case being investigated in Madrid, coming to accuse Dolores Delgado to challenge the supremacy of European regulations.