The cousin of the Madrid mayor, José Luis Martínez-Almeida, has acknowledged before the judge investigating the hit of the sanitary material that he contacted the mayor’s right-hand man, Matilde García Duarte, to tell him how Luis Medina could contact the City Council to offer masks, gloves and tests.
According to sources present at the interrogation, the cousin explained that the general coordinator of the Mayor’s Office gave him an email so that Medina could get in touch, just as he did. This thesis contradicts in part with Medina, who assured that he gave him the contact of Elena Collado, the person in charge of managing the contracts due to the pandemic.
Medina, son of the late Duke of Feria, said before the judge and before the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office, in his statement as an investigator, that it was the mayor’s cousin who gave him the contact of Elena Collado, the coordinator of the contracts for the pandemic by the Covid-19. However, Carlos Martínez-Almeida has qualified this statement because he has said he does not know Collado at all nor does he have her contact.
What the cousin gave Medina was a “generic” email that the mayor’s right-hand man had previously told him. Municipal sources maintain that this email is the one used by the General Coordination of the Mayor’s Office, directed by García Duarte, considered the right hand of Martínez-Almeida.
According to the mayor’s cousin -according to these same sources-, Medina contacted him on two occasions. In the first, he gave her the general mail of the coordinator of the Mayor’s Office. Days later he received another call from the commission agent to warn him that he had not received a reply to the email provided. Medina and Carlos Martínez-Almeida did not know each other at all and it was through a former teacher of the first that he put them in contact.
What Carlos Martínez-Almeida did was to insist with García Duarte, who informed him that this was the correct email to send the proposal to the City Council.
Sources of the popular accusation emphasize that what no one has explained is who gave Medina Collado’s contact. The businessman said that he was the cousin who gave it to him and Collado herself, who testified as a witness in Anticorruption, said she did not remember through whom Medina’s contact had come to her.
The head of the Court of Instruction number 47 of Madrid wants to find out if Medina and his partner in this business, Alberto Luceño, obtained a favorable treatment in the contracts. To begin with, he intends to discover if Medina used the legal and pertinent channels to obtain three contracts for a total sum of 15 million euros, of which six million ended up in the pockets of the two commission agents.
Collado is missing to declare. Initially he was going to do it as a witness but the judge has suspended him while he decides whether to change the condition of being investigated. When she is summoned, she must clarify how she came into contact with Medina.
The judge already asked the City Council yesterday so that within five days it could tell him what the generic email was that was used to manage the proposals for the delivery of medical supplies.
In his statement, the mayor’s cousin said that his contact at the mayor’s office gave him a generic email for Medina to contact the City Council. Now the consistory will have to tell the magistrate if it is the same address.
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