Anti-corruption requests 15 years in prison for Luceño and nine for Luis Medina for the "mask case"

Anticorruption has presented its indictment in the mask case: 15 years in prison for Alberto Luceño and nine for Luis Medina for his maneuvers to enrich himself by selling sanitary products to the Madrid City Council during the pandemic.

The Prosecutor's Office accuses both of the crimes of continued aggravated fraud (seven years in prison for each one), and continued falsification of a commercial document (two years).. To Luceño, also of those of continued falsehood in official document (two years) and tax fraud (four years). The crimes are accompanied by fines, which total 450,000 for Medina and 5,450,000 for Luceño.

In addition, the prosecutor Luis Rodríguez Sol requests that the Madrid Court force them to compensate the City Council of the capital with 7.9 million euros. The figure responds, mainly, to the premium paid by the municipal funeral company for the material it bought from them to combat the pandemic (gloves, masks, and tests).

According to the indictment, “the intention of both defendants was to exaggerately enrich themselves at the expense of the aforementioned situation of extreme need and lack of sanitary materials by selling the products for a much higher price than what was offered by the suppliers and this as consequence of the imposition of exorbitant commissions that they kept hidden at all times from the buyer whom they convinced that they were acting for altruistic reasons without obtaining any benefit from the operation”.

The result was that the Madrid City Council was the one that paid the most for masks among the big cities, by far. Barcelona paid 2.5 euros per mask and Zaragoza, 1.6, according to the indictment. As for the virus detection tests, part of the amount claimed from the defendants is due to the fact that they did not work correctly.

According to the letter of the Prosecutor's Office directed by Alejandro Luzón, to collect the commissions and justify them before the banking entities, the defendants would have presented false documents, in some cases incorporating logos of organizations that had nothing to do with the operation, such as the FBI and Interpol.. Luceño also had an identification at his home that he presented to him as a CNI agent.

In addition, Luceño created a company so that it was the one that collected the commissions, thus avoiding personal income tax and paying the most favorable Corporate Tax.. In this way, he stopped paying 1.3 million in taxes.

With the funds, Luceño bought a house and several luxury sports cars. Medina, a sailboat. All these assets are seized by the court that has investigated the case and the prosecutor asks that their confiscation be agreed.

The most serious crime attributed to them, that of fraud, does not punish the high prices of the products, but the deception that they would have launched. The Penal Code punishes as fraudsters those who, “for profit, use deception sufficient to produce error in another, inducing him to perform an act of disposition to the detriment of himself or others.”

The initial penalty for the crime is only up to three years, which is aggravated (up to six) when it affects goods of prime necessity -it is estimated that the medical device was in the pandemic-. And even more (up to eight years) if any other circumstance listed in the law is added to those. The defendants add three: that the fraud exceeds 50,000 euros, that it is committed by abusing the signature of another and also, with “abuse of the existing personal relationships between victim and fraudster”, or taking advantage of his business or professional credibility. All this leads the prosecutor to request a sentence of seven years for this crime, close to the maximum of eight years.