Uncontrolled public money from the pandemic revives the specter of corruption

Uncontrolled public money from the pandemic revives the specter of corruption



Infinity. For those who were not fans of the motor world in the fall of 2009, that name could evoke several things other than a car brand. That changed with the summary of the Gurtel case, responsible for popularizing the luxury subsidiary of Nissan. "Listen, Ricardo wants the car with black upholstery," Álvaro Pérez, 'El Bigotes', told Pablo Crespo in a recording of the case. Ricardo was 'Ric' Costa, leader of the Valencian PP. In recent days, Spaniards who do not frequent the ¡Hola! have added 'Eagle 44' to their collection, a sailboat model of more than 300,000 euros that Luis Medina Abascal bought with part of the million euros that he took for making three or four calls to sell medical supplies while the Spanish died by the hundreds from Covid-19.

The release of a flow of millions of public money for the urgent purchase of medical supplies during the first phase of the pandemic returned the predatory instinct to some businessmen and, it is yet to be proven, the collusion of officials and/or politicians to contribute to commissions that they fluctuate between sheer greed and crime. The first investigations that are beginning to be known recover the iconography of a corruption that seemed to have been buried by the scandals of the great judicial cases of the past decade: relatives who are in the right place and at the right time, judged in search of assets of luxury acquired with public money and politicians who repeat the mantra of "the administrative process was respected at all times".

As in the case of the 'black cards', a separate piece from the Bankia case, the small fish outshines the big one by means of impressionism. The 16 million euros that the directors of Caja Madrid and Bankia spent were insignificant compared to the 23,000 million that it cost the taxpayer to save the financial institution. With the harshness of the current economic crisis, the citizens were scandalized by the judicial and journalistic revelations about some advisers –businessmen, politicians and trade unionists–, who had unlimited amounts of plastic that they spent on hotels, trips, whiskey or simply introduced into the cashier with routine. The Treasury knew nothing of the existence of those cards.

The complaint filed by Anticorruption in court describes how two businessmen with dubious careers, Alberto Luceño and Luis Medina, inflated the price of masks, gloves and tests to the point of making it 148% more expensive and pocketing 6 million euros in commissions. The Prosecutor's Office believes it has gathered enough evidence to accuse them of fraud, document falsification and money laundering and a Madrid judge has opened a case.

The alleged scam to the City Council scandalized by how easy it was for its protagonists; laundering, with the acquisition of the boat, 12 luxury cars, watches with stratospheric prices and hotel nights at 10,000 euros each, has renewed an indignation against corruption aggravated by the moment in which it occurred: the greatest crisis for the Spanish since the Civil War. The relaxation in the controls, by common agreement in all the parties and administrations, with the ultimate goal of acquiring material urgently, completed the ecosystem for businessmen like Luceño and Medina to apply their lack of scruples.

More than a week after elDiario.es will reveal the investigation of the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor The role of one of those anonymous whose name has been running like a rumor for a long time through the corridors of the Palacio de Cibeles, the headquarters of the Madrid City Council, remains unclear. "The handsome cousin" is Carlos Martínez-Almeida, a lawyer with an office in Madrid and more than two decades of practice with whom Luis Medina maintains a "friendship" relationship. That personal link and fame, which always helps in these cases, provided the brother of the Duke of Feria with a mobile phone and a name, Anticorrupción reports. Medina called and said that he and a friend could bring from China the masks with which to save the lives of the toilets that the people of Madrid applauded from their windows every day at eight in the afternoon.

The Prosecutor's Office does not see a crime in the participation of the cousin, whom he limits himself to calling "the mayor's relative" in his complaint, and neither in the Madrid alderman. The high position that distributed the money from the contracts is also saved from his accusations. There is, for the Public Ministry, neither influence peddling nor prevarication. It is the result of investigative proceedings that have now become a judicial process in which a political opposition eager for explanations that transcend the role of businessmen begins to appear. For now, the mayor maintains that his cousin contacted his right-hand man in the Consistory but not with him.

Until now, the figure of the blood brother in politics was monopolized by Juan Guerra, brother of the former Vice President of the Government with Felipe González. The 'very brother' suffered five judicial processes but was only sentenced one year in prison in one of them for tax fraud. The conviction came in 1995. Four years earlier, Alfonso Guerra had been forced to resign due to the political and media scandal of the revelations surrounding his brother.

The businesses carried out in the heat of the pandemic have brought the figure of the brother back to the forefront, in this case that of the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, the politics of the moment. In November 2021, elDiario.es revealed that a businessman friend of the family de la president had been awarded a contract worth 1.5 million euros in the worst phase of the pandemic. Three months had to pass so that, as a result of a hidden war between the Government of the Community of Madrid and the Madrid PP, the second scandal associated with the case broke out: Ayuso's brother would have received up to 283,000 euros in commissions from that contract.

The Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office maintains open investigative proceedings, secret like all others, in which it tries to gather evidence of a crime in the award of the contract and the collection of the commission, which Díaz Ayuso reduces to just over 55,000 euros. The investigation will determine if the award to a businessman with no experience in the health field is correct or if he actually hides a business from Tomás Díaz Ayuso to contract with the Administration, something that is prohibited due to his relationship with the regional president. Tomás does have experience, more than twenty years, in the social-health sector. Politically, the cause has already claimed the head of the former opposition leader, Pablo Casado, who could not withstand the criticism and pressure for having revealed suspicions about the operation.

The constant that runs through all cases is the figure of the entrepreneur. Last decade presented to all Spaniards an emboldened and slicked-back Francisco Correa in Gürtel; to David Marjaliza, the self-made town boy and friend of Francisco Granados who taught the judge what it meant to “move the pencil” in a land reclassification; to the outgoing and trickster Álvaro Pérez, 'El Bigotes'… Even the big businessmen of the biggest construction companies in the country, much more bland, were imputed in the case of box B.

With the case of the masks, the public has discovered Alberto Luceño, Luis Medina's friend who taught at a business school and said that his values ​​were "honesty" and "generosity." The Prosecutor's Office believes that he defrauded the people of Madrid of 5 million euros with which he could have bought the medical material that saved lives. In the case of Luis Medina, there is a debate about whether an individual with two companies can be called an “entrepreneur”: one without activity and the other that does not present accounts.

The cases that exceed the greed in the commissions to register evidence of crime have multiplied in recent weeks in local, regional and even state administrations. The confidential advanced on Friday that a complaint from Vox has led to the imputation of three charges from the Ministries of Health and Finance for awards made through the aforementioned emergency contracts.



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