An operator works in Pavilion 10 of IFEMA, the health warehouse that provided material to the field hospital installed in Madrid, on April 14, 2020. Community of Madrid (Comunidad de Madrid)

The Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office has various investigative proceedings open for the purchase of medical supplies during the pandemic, and has already detected disproportionate benefits in some contracts, up to 400% in some cases, by companies that mediated between public administrations and Chinese manufacturers, according to public ministry sources.

The criminal framework of these behaviors, which reflect an excess of profit at the expense of public coffers taking advantage of an exceptional situation, is very complicated, according to the same sources.

During the first two months of the pandemic, with nearly 1,000 deaths a day, and given the urgent need to dispose of goods that were scarce in the market —masks, personal protective equipment, respirators...— contracting mechanisms were approved that annulled the competition and the main administrative controls of any kind of contest.

This makes it unfeasible or very complicated to attribute a crime to those who took advantage of these circumstances to earn much more money than they would have obtained in a normal situation.

More information

The European Prosecutor's Office calls for the investigation into the contract of Ayuso's brother

Before the coronavirus put Spain on pause, the purchase of medical supplies was a routine administrative process in which administrations put out what they needed and companies competed for the best price and identical quality.

Almost 8,000 million euros a year was the cake to be shared in Spain between subsidiaries of multinationals such as Siemens, Roche, Mediatronic or Dräger and other medium-sized companies.

With the declaration of the state of alarm, the world turned to China, the leading manufacturer of medical supplies.

And the prices skyrocketed: a surgical mask that cost 0.027 euros in a contest went on to cost between 0.4 euros and one euro.

“Under normal circumstances we would never have taken that price for granted, but there was no choice but to accept it,” explained a senior regional official in charge of material purchases in those first months of the pandemic.

In this situation, the intermediaries, many of them without any experience in the sector, went to the public administrations offering this Chinese material to do great business.

"We have come across cases in which the intermediary bought sanitary material in China and sold it in Spain, to any administration, for four or five times more," say sources familiar with the open investigation in the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office.

Greed is not criminalized in the Penal Code.

The situation was exceptional, extremely serious, with hundreds of deaths daily and thousands of infected in a situation of great lack of protection due to lack of medical supplies.

companies without experience

EL PAÍS has asked dozens of companies that during the pandemic obtained contracts with various autonomous communities to supply medical supplies to administrations.

In many cases, these are firms without experience in the health sector but that in those days managed to bring abundant material from China.

Most companies have refused to provide data on the price they paid in China, so it is impossible to draw any conclusions about their profits.

Two of these companies, requesting anonymity, did provide the data of their sales contracts to the administration and their purchases in China.

One of them detailed the following: He bought a million three-layer surgical masks, at 0.33 dollars each, and sold them to an autonomous community at 0.65 euros (more than double, according to the exchange rate at the time).

He bought 100,000 KN95/FFP2 masks at $1.62 and sold them at €2.65.

And he bought 100,000 goggles for $2.89 and then sold them for $5.95.

The other company recorded a lower profit, above 25%.

Legal experts understand that there is no capacity to attribute a crime to this apparent lack of scruples —or taking advantage of market inertia— when charging excessive amounts to the public administration for medical supplies during the worst weeks of the pandemic.

"Doing a scandalous business taking advantage of the exceptional situation that Spain was suffering may be reprehensible from an ethical point of view, but it is not illegal," they maintain.

State contracts

The PP parliamentary group in the Madrid Assembly has filed a complaint with the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office to investigate 12 contracts for more than 300 million euros awarded by different central government agencies during the pandemic.

The argument of the PP in the Madrid Assembly, which follows the orders of the regional president, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, is as follows: "The health emergency situation cannot justify any restriction of competition and the absence of any form of control to guarantee the public interest, which avoids waste and cronyism.

The Court of Auditors establishes the need to prove the solvency of the contracting companies, as well as the adequacy of their corporate purpose”.

“After the publication of the corresponding information in various media, there are a series of contracts, formalized by different bodies of the State Administration, in which the contractor could have a close or family relationship with a high position, or not. The due solvency requirements of the contractor have been met, which led to detrimental results for the administration”, adds the complaint.

Ayuso reacted with this initiative to the investigation opened three weeks ago by the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office of the contract signed with the Community of Madrid by the Priviet company, without any experience in the medical device sector.

Priviet sold 250,000 masks that he had bought in China at five euros each.

Ayuso's brother was the person who obtained the material for that company and his transfer to Madrid.

For this job, which took him less than 10 days, he received at least 55,000 euros.

The regional president, who hid this data from public opinion until Pablo Casado, president of the PP, spoke about the business in February of this year, considers that the contract that benefited her brother is perfectly legal and does not admit any reproach.

The 'Ayuso case', between the European and Spanish prosecutors

The Attorney General of the State, Dolores Delgado, will foreseeably resolve this Monday the conflict of jurisdiction raised by the chief Anti-corruption prosecutor, Alejandro Luzón, on account of the open investigation into the contract for the supply of masks in the Community of Madrid for which he did business the brother of the regional president, Isabel Díaz Ayuso.

The European Prosecutor's Office created to monitor fraud in the use of European funds requested this investigation for itself upon learning that the money used by the Community of Madrid to pay this contract (1.5 million euros for 250,0000 FPP2 masks) came from that item who watches.

The Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office, which opened proceedings three weeks ago to investigate the case, understands that the crimes that could have occurred in the contract refer to prohibited negotiations with officials, falsehoods in public documents or influence peddling, all of them associated with corruption. .

And it considers that these crimes do not affect the financial interests of the European Union. 

The State Attorney General, Dolores Delgado, will take these arguments into account to make a Solomonic decision, according to department sources: the investigation of the contract that benefited the brother of the Madrid president, Tomás Díaz Ayuso, will take place both in the European Public Prosecutor's Office, that will investigate the possible embezzlement of public funds, as in the Spanish Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office.

This Friday, Anticorruption had to stop the proceedings in which it has already advanced regarding the benefit that allowed that award, although it has not yet taken a statement from anyone. 

Exclusive content for subscribers

read without limits

subscribe

I'm already a subscriber