The two photos of the supposed San Chin Choon that Luceño sent to the person in charge of Purchasing of the Madrid City Council, as stated in the summary.
The investigation into the commission agents Luis Medina and Alberto Luceño has become a kind of
Waiting for Godot
, by Samuel Beckett, one of the masterpieces of the theater of the absurd.
Judge Adolfo Carretero and the Prosecutor's Office have had their particular Godot appear in the investigation, baptized in this summary as San Chin Choon, that ghost character who is expected for days, but who never arrives.
Questions fly over this alleged 52-year-old Malaysian businessman, who theoretically supplied the sanitary material that the accused would use to allegedly defraud the Madrid City Council.
A man whom the Public Ministry has been trying to interrogate for a year and a half, and whom Luceño claims to have seen in person:
—He is the CEO of Leno, [the company that provided the gloves, masks and covid tests].
And I have been physically meeting with him in Wanzhou — Luceño assured the prosecutor in April 2021.
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The Prosecutor's Office investigates whether Luceño is behind the alleged San Chin Choon who sends emails to the judge
"I did everything with San Chin Choon," he repeated to Judge Carretero in April 2022: "I saw this man in an operation that was carried out in China."
But the public ministry has always shown its doubts about the participation of the Asian in commercial operations.
So the question is already on the table: Who is San Chin Choon?
Other accusations even question its existence after the investigations took a new turn this September, when the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office asked the magistrate to open a new secret room to investigate whether Luceño or another Spanish-speaker is behind the alleged businessman who has sent emails to the judge this summer, where the version of the commission agents is supported.
those
emails
—written in English, despite the fact that Luceño said that Malaysians do not speak this language— present "grammatical errors" that "show that it has been written by someone who [...] has Spanish as their mother tongue," the prosecutor underlines.
To this suspicion are added others that accumulate in a summary that already adds up to hundreds of pages: doubled and "simulated" signatures, falsified documents, dates that do not match...
Copy of the passport of San Chin Choon, supposed contact of the commission agents in Leno, which the businessmen provided to the authorities.
The new twist in the script has not generated too much surprise in the opposition parties, presented as a popular accusation in the instruction.
Rita Maestre, spokesperson for Más Madrid in the capital's Town Hall, considers that the doubts about Choon's identity are "another delusional episode of a case of scoundrels, of swindlers, that the mayor has tried from the beginning to hide and cover”: “The City Council does nothing to clarify the facts and purge responsibilities.
We wonder why.
And the answer is simple: these two people came on the recommendation of relatives of José Luis Martínez-Almeida."
Along the same lines, Alejandra Jacinto, deputy of United We Can in the regional Assembly:
“Now it turns out that one of the commission agents is presumably posing as a CNI agent and bogging down the investigation.
These are the businessmen with whom Almeida has done business in the worst of the pandemic.”
businessman's photos
San Chin Choon bursts into this convoluted sale of defective sanitary material to the City Council very soon in the worst of the pandemic, which allowed the two commission agents to pocket almost six million euros, which they later spent on luxury items such as cars, watches, a yacht or a house.
At 1:37 p.m. on March 24, 2020, in full negotiation with Elena Collado, responsible for the Purchasing area of the Consistory, Luceño sends her a first document with the name of the alleged businessman and two photographs where he is seen dressed in a traditional costume in a apparent award ceremony.
Luceño has told several times that he has known Choon since at least 2018. That he met him in person and that he appointed him Leno's exclusive agent for the sale, among other products, of "sugar" or "chicken."
Also, that they used an intermediary – the police intercepted Luceño a WhatsApp chat with a person nicknamed Anthony, according to the summary.
"I have always had relations with Leno," he repeated to the prosecutor, to whom he provided documents that supposedly supported his words.
But those papers are false, underlines Anticorruption.
Among other indications "it can be seen at first glance that Choon's signature stamped on some [documents] is different from the one stamped on others," emphasizes the accusation, which also stresses that, during all this time, Luceño has not contributed any conversation with the Malaysian businessman, despite the multitude of emails and
whatsapps
that appear in the case.
Almost two years have passed since the Prosecutor's Office opened the investigation.
The two alleged signatures of Sin Chan Choon included in two documents provided by the commission agents, which raise doubts for the prosecutor, who believes that at least one was forged.
Among those documents allegedly signed by Choon, which the public ministry considers false, is a letter where it is agreed that the commission payments should be made to an account owned by Luceño, who should later share them with Medina, as agreed.
Although, according to the investigations, the first handled the money at his whim and, of the almost six million euros that were taken, he kept five.
In search of choon
The Prosecutor's Office has been trying to find Choon since May 2021.
At that time, the public ministry sent Malaysia a request for collaboration so that the businessman could be located and questioned about these events.
But the authorities of the Asian country responded that, after finding him, he did not want to testify.
However, he did respond in April 2022 to a phone call from the Efe agency, in which he supported the version of the two defendants: "Everything is clean," he said.
At that time, despite the fact that Malaysia had already reported the refusal, Luceño guaranteed the judge that he had contacted Choon again: "And I think he has already declared."
Then, on July 22, the magistrate received an email in the name of the Asian businessman, who supported the version of those investigated and said he did not understand why the authorities of his country said that he did not want to cooperate.
Despite the doubts, Carretero then asked him to travel to Spain to answer his questions, but he has replied that "for work reasons" it is impossible for him.
Of course, he offers to testify in Chinese from the Spanish embassy in Kuala Lumpur, and has set possible dates and time: October 21 or 28 at 10:00, on which the instructor has not commented.
Again,
Waiting for San Chin Choon
.
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