Matilde García Duarte, general coordinator of the Mayor’s Office of Madrid and right-hand man of Mayor José Luis Martínez Almeida, testified this Friday before the judge instructing the mask case that she was never informed of Luis Medina’s approach or of the call about it that he received. did his cousin and that in any case, this supplier was treated as “one more”.
He has revealed, however, that the official in charge of purchases, Elena Collado, sent him a message saying that both Medina and his partner Alberto Luceño were resigning their commissions and have made that document available to the judge. She, it should be remembered, testified that she never spoke or knew anything about the benefit of the two businessmen.
As reported to ABC in sources present in the statement, García Duarte has stressed that he never gave instructions to anyone to send any mail or contract with someone specific or indicate it to a third party.
In fact, he has assured that he did not know Luis Medina “at all”, that he has never seen him in person and that he did not know that he was the son of the late Duke of Feria.
Her story is that the cousin of the mayor of Madrid, Carlos Martínez Almeida, with whom she has been friends for 15 years, called her and asked her to which email address some businessmen could send their offer of sanitary material and she provided it. The next day she received another call from him to confirm that the address provided was correct.
At this point, he has stressed that he did not inform the mayor of this call because, always according to his statement, the alderman in those days when hundreds of people died in the city, had more important things to attend to.
Once Luis Medina’s email entered the generic mail of the Mayor’s Coordination, he called him, something that until now had not been revealed in the judicial investigation. García Duarte has clarified questions from the parties that he did it with many people those days and that in any case, Medina was treated as “one more.” With that call she hoped to find out what materials they could offer and if it was sales or donations. Once it was made clear that it was to sell, the email was sent to purchasing management and he did not speak to him again.
Likewise, to questions of the popular accusations, he has given an account of how the management worked. A protocol was established at the beginning of the pandemic according to which, everything that arrived at the Mayor’s Office and was not a donation was automatically referred to those responsible for purchases and that is how Medina’s offer ended up reaching the official Elena Collado , which was the one that closed the business.
In fact, he has put all the weight on her as responsible for the negotiation and the contract, to the point that he has provided Judge Adolfo Carretero with an email that Collado sent him about it and announcing that Luceño and Medina, accused of taking a pinching 48% of the contract, they had waived their commissions. He transferred to him, legal sources report, that both “deserved a medal.”
It is a controversial matter because Collado has declared in the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office first and before the judge, later, that he never spoke of commissions with the two businessmen and that he sensed that something would be taken but that if he had heard that word, “commission”, he would have gone to the court. In any case, she has also testified that she assumed that the businessmen came altruistically to offer sanitary material to the City Council because there was a need.
