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TWO businessmen have been acquitted of defrauding Madrid City Council by charging €6 million in commission for securing a PPE contract in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Alberto Luceño and Luis Medina were in the dock for a high-profile case heard by the Madrid Provincial Court.
It was ruled by the court that the men were not guilty of deceiving the Madrid Council in 2020, when they acted to secure the PPE deal.
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In a separate matter, Luceño was jailed for a total of three months and eight months for defrauding tax authorities and for document forgery.
He also has to pay a €3.5 million fine and compensate the Tax Agency to the tune of over €1.35 million.
Over the PPE contract, the court ruled that ‘it is not proven’ that Luceño and Medina said they were not going charge any commission when getting supplies to Madrid.
There was no mention of the waiving of commission fees between men and representatives from Madrid City Council.
It therefore considered that they did not hide they were going to get multi-million commissions and that the council ‘did not ask them about it either’.
The court said that Medina and Luceño were not ‘obliged to inform the buyer’ of the existence of a commission and its amount.
The court ruled that the defendants did not commit a crime by concealing information they had to disclose to the buyer.
Madrid City Council purchased a number of vaccines at the beginning pandemic. Leno, a Malaysian firm, has sold 250,000 Covid Tests and 2.5 million gloves.
The contract was signed by Luceño and Medina for over €11.5 million.
According to Judge Adolfo Carretero, in charge of investigating the case, the prices had been ‘inflated’ by 60% in the case of masks, 81% for the gloves and 71% for the tests.
The two businessmen with the high prices managed to get the contract, which brought ‘high commissions’ with Luceño pocketing €5 million Medina, €1 million.
Money spent on luxury cars or a yacht.
