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The second manufacturer in the Tomás Díaz Ayuso contract was also not authorized by China to sell masks

2022-05-18T03:50:35.513Z


Zhangjiagang Xiecheng Machinery Equipment Co., Ltd is an aluminum factory that started making non-medical masks in March 2020. Priviet paid for the masks to a Korean firm that bought them from the Chinese company


The Madrid president, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, on Thursday at a plenary session of the regional Assembly. Isabel Infantes (Europa Press)

At the end of March 2020, Tomás Díaz Ayuso, brother of the president of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, was looking for masks in Asia, but instead of resorting to the nearly 3,000 reliable manufacturers in China, he bought material from factories that did not provide any. warranty.

First, he considered face masks from a Chinese electrical cable producer that gave him fake quality certificates;

Later, he ended up acquiring all the material from a second factory in that country, an inexperienced aluminum producer with a very worrying profile.

More information

Daniel Alcázar, the partner of Tomás Díaz Ayuso: "This is the chicken of my life"

This other company, whose identity has been hidden by the Community of Madrid, does not appear on the "white lists" of producers authorized by China, some documents released by that country to prevent fraud in international purchases.

The company is called Zhangjiagang Xiecheng Mechanical Equipment Co, Ltd. and started producing face masks on March 16, 2020. According to its corporate purpose, they are “non-medical disposable masks”.

In addition, this company provided an invalid quality certificate dated March 28, coincidentally the same day that the textile fashion company Priviet Sportive SL, owned by Daniel Alcázar, a friend of Tomás Díaz Ayuso, made its offer to the Community from Madrid.

Also on that same date, the Chinese company requested the registration of its masks before the US authorities, which ultimately did not approve it.

It was Tomás Díaz Ayuso, a commercial veteran of sanitary products, who was in charge of the procedures to acquire the product and transport it to Barajas.

The payment, however, was not made directly to the Chinese manufacturer, but rather to a Korean company, a regular supplier of Priviet Sportive SL, sources familiar with the operation confirmed to EL PAÍS.

The price paid is unknown, but it is known that the Community of Madrid paid an invoice of five euros per unit, one of the highest in the pandemic.

The facts call into question the safety of these masks, a product that was supposed to protect its wearers from a deadly virus.

Tomás Díaz Ayuso has rejected this newspaper's opportunity to make his version known.

His partner and friend, Daniel Alcázar, assures in a consultation for this report that they verified the guarantees of that company in a database, but he does not remember which one.

The Community has limited itself to responding with its argument: “The merchandise was presented on time, in the place, with the quality and in the number indicated by the contractor and, once this verification was carried out, payment was made at the end of June. of 2020, after accounting control by the auditor”.

The regulations in force in the pandemic required the regional authorities to verify that the merchandise was authorized by the Chinese authorities,

A representative of the second Chinese factory has declared to this newspaper that they did not deal in masks at any time, despite the fact that the documents show their willingness to dedicate themselves to it.

“We never sold them.

We made masks to use ourselves, but we never sold them”, emphasizes the international sales manager of this aluminum factory, who is identified on his website as “Mr.

Wang”.

“We do give away small quantities to our customers, but at most it was hundreds of units or a few thousand,” he adds.

The Community of Madrid has tried to hide the identity of this second factory since the scandal surrounding this sale broke out in February, when the team of former PP president Pablo Casado revealed that the brother of the president Isabel Díaz Ayuso had profited from she.

The Madrid government sent the purchase file to this newspaper in March, supposedly complete, where only the certificates of the first of the manufacturers appear.

Earlier this month, the Community revealed that the origin of the masks was really the second factory, but hid its name by crossing it out on a quality certificate that it made public.

That document turned out to be useless in proving the quality of the product because the Italian laboratory that issued it is not authorized to test masks.

A spokesman for the Madrid Ministry of Health did not reveal to this newspaper the crossed-out name of that second manufacturer, but the Community had left a way open to discover it: the file number in the document from the Italian laboratory was revealed.

When entering these figures in the database of that center, Zhangjiagang Xiecheng Mechanical Equipment Co, Ltd appears. This identity was first revealed by the

InfoLibre newspaper

.

The factory is located on the Pacific coast, north of Shanghai, and began operations in 2004. Since then it has been dedicated to the sale of machinery, aluminum and chemical products.

It has just 32 workers, according to Chinese social security records.

Last year it changed its name to Jiangsu Xiecheng Intelligent Equipment Co. Ltd. There is no trace of mask-producing activity on its website.

Widespread fraud

The European employers' association of personal protective equipment (PPE) importers, the European Safety Federation, estimates that before the pandemic there were some 3,000 mask producers in China, a figure that doubled when many inexperienced factories joined production to supply the rest of the world.

To do this, they bought huge machines capable of producing masks in a fully automated way.

The problem arose in March 2020, when complaints from other countries began that many of these products were a fiasco.

At the end of that month, the Chinese authorities released white lists of Chinese producers with guarantees, either because they had foreign quality certificates, or because they had been authorized by the National Administration of Medical Products,

the control body of the drug market in China.

This second factory does not appear in any of those lists, which include more than 1,000 companies.

The Community of Madrid has not provided this newspaper with other quality certificates from that factory, but it is striking that the date of Priviet Sportive SL's offer to the Community of Madrid coincides with two attempts by the factory to cover itself with a patina quality.

On March 28, 2020, the day that Priviet offers 250,000 masks for five euros each in a brief message, that Chinese company acquired the document from the Italian laboratory, Ente Certificazione Macchine, which issued them in exchange for a fee and without evaluating the material.

Letter with the offer of masks that Priviet Sportive SL made to the Community of Madrid on March 28, 2020.

Ente Certificazione Maccine document dated March 28, 2020 that lacks product quality assurance of Zhangjiagang Xiecheng Mechanical Equipment Co.,LTD,

Also that day, he requested the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to register his masks, according to what appears on the website of that US government department.

A spokeswoman, Audra Harrison, clarifies that this request is only the beginning of a process.

“It's what it takes to get through our door.

It is necessary to understand that the fact that a product is in our registry does not mean that it has been approved, cleared or authorized”.

Masks from Zhangjiagang Xiecheng Mechanical Equipment Co, Ltd do not appear in the databases of medical products that have received the green light from the FDA.

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Source: elparis

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