The PP has launched an all-out offensive against the president of Congress, Francina Armengol (PSOE), of whom it demands her resignation over a Balearic Government contract that she presided over for the purchase of masks in favor of the company Soluciones de Gestión, recommended by Koldo García, the then main advisor to Minister José Luis Ábalos who allegedly charged illegal commissions for these efforts. The popular ones insist that Armengol must assume political responsibilities for a case that presents similarities with another episode of corruption in the sale of masks in the pandemic that affected the mayor of Madrid, José Luis Martínez Almeida (PP) and, more tangentially, with which he impacted the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso (PP). The PP maintains that the differences are “obvious and very clear” between one case and another, although the bar it applies to judge them is flexible for the popular administrations and rigid for those of the PSOE.
The popular ones have worked hard to try to differentiate the episode in the Madrid City Council from that affecting the Government of the Balearic Islands, although both present parallels (and also differences). In both cases, the administrations bought by hand on the recommendation of advisors and family members. The Balearic Islands bought 1,400,000 masks for 3.7 million euros (2.5 euros per unit) from a company with hardly any activity and no experience in the sector, Management Solutions, recommended by Ábalos’ former advisor. The Madrid City Council, for its part, purchased different protective material from Luis Medina and Alberto Luceño, intermediaries with no experience in that sector. Medina offered the material to the Madrid City Council through a relative of the mayor, José Luis Martínez Almeida, according to the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office, and ended up selling it for almost 16 million dollars that the City Council had to advance (at 6.5 euros per unit of mask, an extra cost greater than that of the Balearic Islands).
The Armengol Government had the material analyzed and discovered in 2020 that the masks did not meet the quality conditions that it had required, but did not claim the money back from the company until March 2023. The Almeida Government did not initiate any claim file. to the Medina y Luceño company after also receiving merchandise of lower quality than the promised one. The case ended up in court with the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office accusing the two intermediaries of swindling the City Council, a case in which the City Council has intervened.
Despite these similarities, the spokesperson for the Popular Parliamentary Group in Congress, Miguel Tellado, defended this Tuesday the actions of the Government of Madrid while it did not give truce to Armengol. “In the case of the Madrid City Council, it acted diligently in defense of the interests of the Administration. Not so in the case of the Balearic Islands, where Mrs. Armengol still has to explain who called her to ask her to hire masks from the company commissioned by Mr. Koldo García and why she accepted,” she stressed. “And why when he knew that the masks were defective it took him more than two years to complain and why he only did so at the time when he knew that he was abandoning that responsibility and when he knew that the investigation was underway. I think the differences are obvious and very clear.”
Like Armengol has done, Almeida declared himself a victim of the scam of the two businessmen who profited during the pandemic. The popular deputy secretary Esther Muñoz threw out this Monday the question of why the Madrid City Council did not claim the seven million euros that the businessmen Medina and Luceño defrauded the Consistory in masks, while she charged against the president of Congress on the basis of conjectures. “I am not aware of this matter of the City Council and the person who can best respond is the mayor of Madrid. But President Armengol is the third authority of the State. The information we are learning is not that she was the victim of a scam, it is that she knew what was happening with those masks and despite that she changed the specifications so that they were paid for with European funds and issued a quality seal so that others administrations contracted with the plot. “She has absolutely nothing to do with it,” Muñoz justified.
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Armengol’s episode also recalls, in music, that of Ayuso’s brother, who received a commission of 234,000 euros during the pandemic for the sale of masks to the Government of the Community of Madrid in a contract awarded to a company unrelated to the healthcare sector. The case, however, did not have a judicial process because the Prosecutor’s Office saw no crime, although it presented ethical problems. The popular spokesperson, Miguel Tellado, also defended this Tuesday the actions of the Ayuso Government. “On this matter there have been two final rulings, two judicial orders, which shelved that investigation. Today what we know is that there is a clear case of corruption here recognized by the PSOE itself at the time when they demanded Mr. Ábalos’ immediate resignation. Therefore, I think we are facing radically different circumstances.”
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