The prosecutor asks for 15 jail for Luceño and 9 for Medina for the mask scam in the City of Madrid

Alberto Luceño enters the police station to sign, on May 4 in Madrid.José Ruiz (Europa Press)

The prosecutor of the so-called masks case of Madrid has asked for 15 years in prison for the commission agent Alberto Luceño and 9 for his partner Luis Medina, whom he accuses of defrauding the Madrid City Council with the sole objective of "exaggeratedly enriching himself" at the worst moment of the covid pandemic, with commissions and exorbitant surcharges in the sale of sanitary material. The Public Ministry considers both authors of a continuous crime of aggravated fraud and another of falsification in commercial documents, but charges the inks on Luceño as the warper of all the scam, forger and deceiver of his own partner. The letter specifies that the City Council paid almost 12 million euros for masks, gloves and tests, of which 5.1 million ended up in the accounts of Luceño and one million, in those of the son of the Duke of Feria. The Prosecutor's Office specifies that the consistory chaired by José Luis Martínez-Almeida was, "by far", the municipality in Spain that paid the most for masks and covid tests. It is also requested that Luceño pay a fine of almost six million euros and that both pay 7.8 million in compensation to the Municipal Company of Funeral Services and Cemeteries of Madrid, which was the one that put the money.

The prosecutor Luis Rodríguez Sol has already presented his brief of provisional conclusions a month and a half after the magistrate Adolfo Carretero, responsible for the Court of Instruction Number 47 of Madrid, proposed to sit on the bench to the two commission agents for the alleged millionaire scam that they tended to the City of Madrid. The prosecutor explains that, in March 2020, when the pandemic had just broken out, Spain had been confined and hundreds of people died every day, Luis Medina contacted the Madrid City Council, presenting himself as an intermediary who already sold to European governments, but with a view to doing business.

The Public Ministry considers that they were already plotting "to enrich themselves exaggeratedly at the expense of the aforementioned situation of extreme need and lack of sanitary materials, selling the products for a price much higher than that offered by the suppliers, and this as a result of the imposition of exorbitant commissions that kept hidden at all times from the buyer, whom they convinced that they acted for altruistic reasons, without obtaining any benefit from the operation."

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Luceño the prosecutor accuses him of the crimes of aggravated fraud, falsification in commercial and official document and another aggravated against the 'public' Treasury, while the son of the Duke of Feria and the model Naty Abascal, Luis Medina, considers him co-author of fraud and falsification in commercial document for this operation of sale of sanitary material in which, According to the investigation, both pocketed $6.6 million in commissions. Or as Luceño said, they took that money "pa la saca". But the commissions were not distributed equally: Luceño deceived his friend, and pocketed more than five million, while Medina took a million. All money from the people of Madrid.

The letter details that the prices of sanitary materials "were imposed by Luceño to the City Council", which he assured was what the exporter was asking for. But he hid that he was charging the product with overpricing and commissions for him of "approximately 60% in the case of masks, 81% in the case of gloves and almost 71% in the case of tests." In one of the items of masks, it reads, the real price was 2.68 million, but "the defendants artificially inflated it to take as a net profit of the operation 4,000,000 dollars; that is, 148% of the real price of the product." The scam could have been bigger, but the products failed and the relationship declined.

In its letter, in addition to the prison sentence, Anticorruption asks for Luceño a total fine of 5.6 million euros, while for Medina it requests 450,000 euros, and claims that both compensate the Municipal Company of Funeral Services of Madrid, which was the one that formalized the purchase, with the amount corresponding to the commissions they earned and the surcharge paid by the City Council. In addition, it demands that both face jointly and severally a compensation of 7.82 million euros, an amount that rises by 1.351 million for Luceño that should be paid to the Treasury. The prosecutor also wants to confiscate the assets currently seized from both, as well as "any others in the possession of the defendants up to the amount of 4,623,350.05 euros in the case of Alberto Luceño, and the amount of 912,700 euros, in the case of Luis Medina. "

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