The commissioner Luis Medina takes advantage of the inaction of the Madrid City Council to try to avoid the bench | Spain

Commissioner Luis Medina, brother of the Duke of Feria, launches the attack again to try to avoid the bench. The businessman, prosecuted last week together with his partner Alberto Luceño for defrauding the Madrid City Council with the sale of sanitary material in the worst of the pandemic, has appealed the decision of the investigating magistrate Adolfo Carretero through a 25-page document, to which EL PAÍS had access. Medina proposes a kind of amendment to all the investigations, in addition to attacking the conclusions of the Prosecutor’s Office and the judge, to whom he attributes “voluntaristic assessments and devoid of legal significance.” In this sense, his defense minimizes the role he played in the operations under suspicion; he puts all the responsibility on Luceño; and, even, he reproaches the Consistory for the “lax conduct” that he had in his hiring “controls”.

Medina tries to use the inaction of the City Council, headed by José Luis Martínez-Almeida (PP), who now denounced the alleged fraud and who did not join the cause until the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor promoted it. “[El Consistorio]After receiving all the products, he was satisfied”, argues the commission agent, who adds: “No one complained and everything seemed adequate to them. And this has a single reading: at no time did they feel cheated or deceived, since they paid money for material that they actually received”. However, according to the judge and the public ministry, Luceño and Medina hatched a plan to inflate the prices of the material purchased through a Malaysian company (Leno), hiding it from the local Administration and pocketing almost six million euros in commissions.

In his indictment, Judge Carretero clearly describes the alleged plot. The instructor stressed that the two businessmen “took advantage” of the “imperative need” that the City Council had to obtain sanitary material; and “they hatched a plan” to supply gloves, masks and covid tests, pretending that they did it “altruistically”. The magistrate ruled out the implication of charges from the consistory.

Medina, who asks that the case against him be filed, maintains a very different thesis. He takes a mere secondary role in the operations — “he had no intervention in the contract negotiations […] The only role he played in all this business was that of a facilitator, limiting himself to putting Mr. Luceño in contact with the Madrid City Council”, alleges his defense. He also denies that he tried to deceive the City Council: “Medina had nothing to do with the agreed prices, nor did he talk about them with anyone. He neither intervened nor managed any point of the contracts. He did not hide the price of the commissions, nor did he mislead the City Council on this point: first, because nobody asked him; and second, because he himself did not know them for sure, until the business was perfected ”, they expose in his appeal, dated this Monday.

In his defense, Medina goes much further and assures that he never had “a profit motive on the municipal patrimony.” According to his theory, “he never sought or had any intention of receiving any amount from the City, since the amount paid for his work as a facilitator was paid exclusively by Leno.” The summary has been credited to the fact that the Consistory paid the Malaysian company, and that it later transferred the million-dollar amounts to the commission agents.

Along these lines, Medina’s letter continues: “He is being charged with a crime of fraud for having charged and allegedly concealed excessive commissions. In Spanish law, commissions are allowed; and they can be higher or lower, but without any limitation, since market rules apply, and although the amount of some may seem excessive, the difference between criminal legality and morality must be very clear”. The appeal also reproaches the City Council for “having been lax in its control measures”: “Being a legal person with a complex organization, it enjoys defensive mechanisms (technical bodies, legal advice, its own legal body…) that, in case of deception, it could have prevented its supposed effectiveness. The absolute negligence of this entity as an organization in the control of contracts in the covid era, the only thing that could give rise to is the assumption of civil responsibilities, never criminal ”.

The judge attributed to Medina crimes of aggravated fraud and falsification of a commercial document. Luceño is accused of the same, in addition to falsehood in a public document and a tax offense. The magistrate ruled out money laundering.

Medina’s theory

Judge Carretero accuses Medina of obtaining, through the mayor’s cousin, a privileged entry route into the local Administration, “taking advantage of his status as a public and famous figure, for being the son of the [anterior] duque de Feria and a famous model and appear in gossip magazines and television”. But the commission agent’s defense insists that “the only thing he did was put Luceño in contact with the City Council”, and that he got it through the “generic” email that was provided to him. “The social condition of my principal, and above all who his parents are or what his origin is, are not circumstances to take into account when charging him with crimes of fraud and documentary falsification. At no time did Medina allude to his family procedure or who he was to get in touch with him. [Consistorio]”, affirms his lawyer.

“In addition, it is essential to highlight that the Madrid City Council knew perfectly well that in this operation there would be commission agents and runnerssince this information is included in the clause ‘non-circumvention and non-disclosure‘contained in the three contracts that they used with Leno”, also expose Medina’s defense, who attacks the instructor for having ruled out calling the representative of the Malaysian company, San Chin Choon, after he made these evasions in court — A testimony that, in any case, the investigators believe that it is directed by Luceño himself, who would have colluded with the Asian to declare himself in favor of both. Medina also attributes any documentary forgery to his partner: “He had full confidence in Luceño, and he presented the documentation that the meritorious gentleman sent him, in the certainty that there was no type of alleged falsehood”

Resource of Mas Madrid

The judge ended the investigation last week, when he prosecuted the two commission agents. In addition to Medina’s writing, other resources are expected. Although not in the same sense. Thus, sources from the Más Madrid party, represented as a popular accusation, explain that the formation will also ask to reverse the magistrate’s decision by considering the closure of the instruction “hasty”: “There is a lack of documentation to be analyzed. The City Council did not pursue at any time to recover the money, which should be investigated in the course of an instruction that is now closed ”, these sources emphasize.