A bank receipt confirms the second payment to the other alleged scammer from the Madrid City Council

The Madrid City Council has been very cautious since the contracts for the purchase of medical supplies were placed under the spotlight during the covid pandemic.

The Government of José Luis Martínez-Almeida, pressured by the opposition, measures all its movements since the investigation of the commission agents Luis Medina and Alberto Luceño, to which a second alleged scam has been added: the acquisition of 500,000 defective masks to Sinclair and Wilde, a company based in New York and headed by Philippe Haim Solomon, a man whom the Spanish police were looking for to ask him for explanations and who finally considered him untraceable.

Now, a bank receipt confirms that the municipal administration made a second payment to this company worth 1.25 million euros.

On March 23, 2020, after the great confinement was decreed, the Madrid City Council gave the green light to purchase half a million face masks from Sinclair and Wilde for 2.5 million euros.

"We accept your price and conditions," communicated Engracia Hidalgo, councilor for the Treasury, by letter to Solomon that same day.

Only one day later, on the 24th, the first payment is made for 1.25 million —half the price agreed for the merchandise—, according to the payment order made by Bankinter and incorporated into a police report.

Subsequently, three weeks later, on April 14, the second payment was executed for another 1.25 million, according to a bank receipt to which EL PAÍS had access and incorporated into the summary that investigates the Luceño and Medina commissions.

Dates are important.

According to the Municipal Police, who prepared a report —sent to the Madrid courts in 2021—, irregularities were found in the operation before the second payment.

"On April 7, when certain irregularities were detected that could lead to a breach of the contract by the legal services of the City Council, an order was given to refund the amount transferred to the supplier," wrote the chief mayor of the Corps who was in charge of analyzing the case, based on an

sent by the commercial and financial director of the Funeral Services Company, which he used for these purchases of medical supplies during the pandemic.

The masks arrived at City Hall on April 23, as certified by the Director General of Emergencies, Enrique López Ventura.

EL PAÍS contacted the Consistory on Thursday, which did not want to comment on the details of the case as it was in court, and whose existence was revealed by this newspaper.

“Everything is judicialized”, summarize municipal sources, who do not clarify what irregularities were allegedly detected on April 7.

After receiving the complaint from the Police, the Investigating Court 30 of Madrid opened some investigations, which ran aground due to the impossibility of locating the businessman Solomon, with whom the digital newspaper

As a result, the main opposition party in the City Council, Más Madrid, has requested the reopening of the investigations and its appearance as a popular accusation.

24 hours after publishing this information, the City Council tells this newspaper that the "irregularities" detected had nothing to do with the quality of the masks, which had not yet arrived, but with "irregularities" derived from "delays" in shipping .

The link between Solomon and the Consistory

This contract with Sinclair worries the City Council a lot, according to municipal sources.

Beyond the media impact that it may have and the increasingly certain possibility that the case will be reopened in court, the opposition draws a certain parallelism with the hit that Medina and Luceño gave, who pocketed almost six million euros in commissions for the sale of defective material to the City Council.

The mayor of Madrid, José Luis Martínez-Almeida, in an act held this Wednesday. MADRID CITY COUNCIL (Europa Press)

It all started on March 21, 2020, a week after President Pedro Sánchez decreed the start of the state of alarm.

That day there was an exchange of emails between several councilors of the PP of the Madrid Consistory.

After one in the morning, Borja Fanjul Fernandez-Pita, second deputy mayor of the capital and president of the municipal plenary session, receives a message from a close relative, which he forwards to other mayors.

In it, it is indicated: “Good evening, I am writing you this email at the request of Pepa, our mutual friend.

Let me introduce myself, I am Araceli Vida, economist and lawyer, owner of a small office in Madrid”.

Vida is in charge of the Aifos Consultores law firm, located in the central street of Ferraz, a few meters from the Plaza de España in the capital.

Elena Collado, a senior official of the City Council and head of Purchases in the pandemic, identified an "Araceli", in her statement as a witness in the case investigating the Luceño and Medina commissions, as the link through which Solomon contacted the Consistory.

“Among the activities of my office”, continues Vida in the email, “are those of international trade and the establishment of commercial relations with factories abroad”.

“Given that we are repeatedly hearing on television that there is no sanitary material, in recent days we have decided to focus all our activity on seeking the best supply offer from among the factories with which we usually work.

There is nothing we want more than that material can be used in Spain.

The factories are giving us priority because of the relationship that unites us, but we know that there is more than enough demand from other countries to buy all the production.

I enclose information.

As you will understand, due to the urgency that concerns us, I had to make this small dossier very homemade,

the important thing is the information and the speed of transmission”.

The

concludes with the full availability of Vida to receive calls from the City Council.

This email is forwarded to Engracia Hidalgo and Inmaculada Sanz, Councilors for Finance and Security of the Consistory, respectively, and in charge at that time of managing the emergency contracts.

In the summary of the case about Medina and Luceño, in addition to this email, the City Council also provided a table in the form of an Excel document where 16 emergency contracts appear.

This identifies Aifos as a "supplier" and reflects an alleged payment to the firm of 500,000 euros for the delivery of one million masks, registered on March 24, 2020 - the same day that Sinclair is paid for the first time. —.

But Aifos is not a supplier.

His work, as Life itself says in the

, is that of an intermediary.

Why does this payment appear in that document to the company Aifos?

"It's a mistake.

It is an internal document that has nothing to do with official documents”, emphasize municipal sources.

The same sources point out that the City Council has not paid Aifos with public money for the purchase of masks, nor commissions.

This newspaper has contacted Vida herself, without receiving any response.

The City Council admits that it invested 2.5 million euros in the purchase of hundreds of thousands of masks that came from Solomon, Sinclair's visible head.

However, as reported by the Municipal Police, the masks did not have the appropriate quality certificate.

In addition, the investigators were unable to locate Solomon, for which he asked the New York Police for help.

She went to the supposed offices of the company, but there she found that they were used by a certain Henry MF, who said that simply, "as a favor to a client", he allowed Sinclair to use that postal address.

Henry added that he had only once spoken to Solomon by “video call or

”, and that he had never met him in person and believed “that he lives somewhere in Europe”.

The Municipal Police report does not include any reference to the intermediary who put Sinclair in contact with the City Council.

On Thursday,

published a conversation with Solomon himself, in which he says that he would be willing to collaborate with the Spanish justice system: "I am not at all hidden."

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