The investigation into alleged fraud against Madrid City Council in the sale of hygiene items in the worst of the pandemic, in which Commission agents Luis Medina and Alberto Luceño stole almost six million euros, has opened unexpected doors. After almost a year of investigation, the investigation is now dissecting the figure of Luceño, who presented himself to the judge Adolfo Carretero as an experienced “agent” dedicated to export, but turned out to be a businessman with several shadows. Police found forged documents at his home – including a CNI license plate number – and the Treasury Department has described how he hatched a corporate scheme to defraud the Treasury Department. The magistrate has already charged him with four types of offenses and will question him again on February 10.
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The corporate action. The judge extended the focus to Luceño this week. Carretero accused him of a serious crime against the treasury on Monday. In a report of almost 100 pages, to which EL PAÍS had access, the tax authority concludes that the commission agent founded a company (Takamaka Invest SL) “ex profeso” in May 2020 to implement a “tax avoidance” mechanism . According to the investigation, the suspect “pretended” that instead of his said company providing their services, Leno, the company that allegedly supplied the plumbing material that would end up at City Hall, thus billed in July 2020 for the operation by Takamaka and later declared as income by corporation tax.
However, the data put Luceño in distress, the Treasury Department has confirmed. The purchase and sale of sanitary material was carried out in March 2020 (at the worst of the pandemic) and commission agents were paid between the end of the same month and April. More than a month before Luceño started his new company with his wife and two children; and nearly four months before Takamaka’s reckoning. “It educates [esa compañía] with a very clear purpose: to insert it into the commercial relationship and to pretend that it is the one who provides the intermediary services, with the aim of achieving a tax reduction,” reveals the tax authority.
Based on the Treasury Department’s calculations, the judge points out that Luceño “has stopped entering more than 1.3 million euros into the public coffers” in relation to the IRPF (Personal Income Tax) of 2020 “, which he was to explain .
78 “versions” of a letter from Almeida. The documentation intervened in the investigation is not without surprises. During a search of Luceño’s home and business, police found a number of official papers that he allegedly altered to “tamper with their original content.” Among other things, the agents found up to 78 “versions” of an alleged letter from the Mayor of Madrid, José Luis Martínez-Almeida, to facilitate the work of exporting products from China during the pandemic – which even “emblems of the Ministry of Health, consumption and social welfare”—; or multiple versions of two certificates issued by the Puerta de Hierro University Hospital and the Director General of Emergencies and Civil Protection of the Madrid City Council. In the latter case, Luceño is added as an “official representative of the Chinese government,” according to the researchers.
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The judge decided this week to investigate these facts as an alleged crime of falsifying an official document.
Two versions of the mayor’s alleged letter to Luceño contained in a police report.
Wrong CNI documents. In mid-January, the judge decided to expand the investigation into Luceno and charge him with another crime of document forgery after a search of his home found false National Intelligence Center (CNI) documents. The agents found a “CNI professional card” and a “license plate”. After analyzing them, they concluded that they were “completely wrong.” “The [hallazgo] It has an analogous link to other documents in the case and to the conduct being investigated against Luceño, which appears to distort his activity and profession,” Carretero wrote, adding: “The above document, a CRF card , which was created in full view resemblance to the real one, it can be used to facilitate the examinee’s business relations with authorities or companies in Asia”.
Image of the CNI identity document that Luceño seized in the register, says the police report sent to the court.
The millionaire scam. The focus of the investigation is a crime of serious fraud. The judge claims that Medina and Luceño “fooled” the City Council into raking in almost six million euros in commissions with the sale of defective hygiene material (gloves, masks and Covid tests) to the consistory in the worst case of the pandemic, when this material was in short supply was on the world market. According to the judge, the two agreed to inflate the costs and withheld them from the administration. “The price of masks increased by 60%; that of gloves by 81%; and that of the tests, 71%, as a result of the commissions to which they had consented”, influenced the instructor in one of his resolutions, in which he stressed that this crime “is punishable by up to eight years in prison”.
the bleaching “With the money from the commissions, Luceño paid for a stay of 60,000 euros in a luxury hotel; He bought three exclusive signature watches worth 42,450 euros; seven luxury vehicles worth 1.03 million euros billed to the Takamaka company […], who also transferred 3.3 million to the account of the previous company, which was used to buy a house in Pozuelo de Alarcón (Madrid) worth 1.1 million…”. With these words, Judge Carretero described the operations he had initiated in the commission agent, which, according to the instructor, constitute an alleged crime of money laundering, punishable by “up to six years in prison”.
Changed papers for banks. Luceño was charged back in April 2022 with a first crime of document forgery, related to the papers he and Medina had submitted to their financial institutions to justify the huge amounts of money that had entered their accounts for the sale of material to the city council . Some documents were forged, according to the police, judge and anti-corruption prosecutor. In it, both presented themselves as Leno’s “exclusive agents”, but the prosecutor found a number of inconsistencies: They are dated “Thursday, September 12, 2018”, although this day was Wednesday; They were apparently initialed nearly two years before the suspected operations, although Medina asserted that he never had any relationship with this Asian company before mediating the sale for the Consistory; and the papers were allegedly altered to add details from the International Chamber of Commerce, the FBI, and Interpol.
The Four Crimes Attributed to Medina
The judge also charges Luis Medina, brother of the Duke of Feria, with four crimes. Although in his case all four were awarded from the beginning of the investigation and the judge has not extended the focus to him this year, unlike Luceño. Judge credits Medina with fraud for allegedly deceiving city council in selling toiletries; the one for money laundering, for buying a sailboat with the money from the suspected operation; and another for forgery over allegedly altered documentation he submitted to his financial institution for the amounts he entered. The latter, in turn, also charges him with confiscation of assets because he parted with part of his assets even though he already knew that the public prosecutor’s office was investigating him and allegedly hid them so as not to be confiscated.
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