Alex Trelinski
TWO businessmen have been acquitted of defrauding Madrid City Council by charging €6 million in commission for securing a PPE contract in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Alberto Luceño and Luis Medina were in the dock for a high-profile case heard by the Madrid Provincial Court.
It ruled the men did not deceive the Madrid council in 2020 when they acted as intermediaries to secure a PPE deal.
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In a separate matter, Luceño was jailed for a total of three months and eight months for defrauding tax authorities and for document forgery.
He also has to pay a €3.5 million fine and compensate the Tax Agency to the tune of over €1.35 million.
Over the PPE contract, the court ruled that ‘it is not proven’ that Luceño and Medina said they were not going charge any commission when getting supplies to Madrid.
The bench said nothing about waiving commission charges was discussed between the men and representatives of Madrid City Council.
It therefore considered that they did not hide they were going to get multi-million commissions and that the council ‘did not ask them about it either’.
The court said that Medina and Luceño were not ‘obliged to inform the buyer’ of the existence of a commission and its amount.
“There is no criminally relevant deception on the part of the defendants, as long as they did not hide something that they were obliged to reveal to the purchaser,” the ruling states.
At the beginning of the pandemic, the Madrid City Council, bought a million masks, 2.5 million pairs of gloves and 250,000 Covid tests from a Malaysian company called Leno.
The contract was secured by Luceño and Medina for over €11.5 million.
According to Judge Adolfo Carretero, in charge of investigating the case, the prices had been ‘inflated’ by 60% in the case of masks, 81% for the gloves and 71% for the tests.
The two businessmen with the high prices managed to get the contract, which brought ‘high commissions’ with Luceño pocketing €5 million Medina, €1 million.
The money paid for luxury cars and a yacht.
