The main crime in the investigation into the sale of medical supplies to the

Madrid City Council

is fraud.

And the core of that crime lies in the existence of a hoax.

A deception that, due to what has been investigated so far, could be in the condition in which the accused

Medina

and

Luceño

appeared : whether as usual sellers who take commission or benefactors who acted

for free et amore

given the circumstances.

On this point, a part of the testimony as a witness of

Matilde García Duarte

, general coordinator of the Mayor's Office and right-hand man of José Luis Martínez Almeida, has turned.

According to sources present in the statement, in his appearance before the judge he explained that the person who negotiated the sale with the accused sent him an email in which he said that both had "renounced" the collection of commissions and that both deserved "a medal ".

The mail provided this Friday to the court was sent by

Elena Collado

, a senior official of the City Council who at the beginning of the pandemic coordinated the purchase of medical supplies and contacts with potential vendors.

On March 24, 2020, she sent an email to various positions in the consistory, including the general coordinator.

The subject of the email revealed satisfaction with how things were going: "URGENT SELL MEDIA PURCHASE MATERIAL".

Fragment of the mail sent by the person in charge of purchases to the coordinator of the Mayor's Office.

One of the points in the email said: "Our suppliers Luis Medina Abascal and Alberto Luceño, (who has companies in China but is from Madrid) who should be given several medals, are taking care of the bulk of our needs. We have been speaking on Friday, and they have waived all kinds of commissions".

The statement contrasts with what actually happened.

In the first of the three signed contracts, the one referring to the masks, the city council paid 6.9 million dollars.

Most of it -almost 60%- corresponded to commissions: one million dollars for Luis Medina and three for Alberto Luceño.

In her own statement as a witness, Collado herself said that she had not discussed with Medina or Luceño the existence or not of commissions in the prices that the council was going to pay.

She specified that she understood that the efforts of both were carried out only to help in such a difficult health situation.

At the gates of the court, the lawyer for

Más Madrid

Nuria Zapico -who exercises the popular accusation- has indicated that the version of the two high-ranking officials of the city council does not fit, because it reveals that compared to what he told the judge as a witness -with obligation legal to tell the truth-, Collado did address the issue of the commission with the defendants.

The questioning has also focused on how much the mayor came to know about the matter.

"Nothing", according to the general coordinator.

Matilde García has stated that she did not inform him that her cousin, Carlos Martínez Almeida, had called her to ask how to put Medina in contact with whoever she was in charge of buying medical supplies.

The witness explained that she considered it a minor matter at a time when hundreds of people died every day.

The mayor, she has said, was then "on more important matters."

The witness has added that when Medina called him, he did not realize that he was the son of the Duke of Feria and that he treated him as "one more".

She referred him to Collado because she was in charge of purchases, while her department only assumed donations.

Then the negotiation between Collado and Luceño did not continue, although Collado sometimes sent him emails telling him how things were going.

In one of those, at the beginning of the negotiations, it was where he was told that the two accused had renounced charging commissions.

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