The Judicial Police are inspecting the headquarters of the Canarian Health Service (SCS) in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria since early morning by order of the European Prosecutor's Office, in search of files related to its former director Conrado Domínguez and its former director of Economic Resources Ana María Pérez.
The nine people participating in this search, ordered within the 'Masks case' (the alleged scam of four million euros to the public health of the islands in the purchase of material that was never delivered), have entered these dependencies of the Canarian Government minutes before 08.30 hours, according to EFE.
This case aims to find out the destination of the four million euros that the SCS advanced in 2022 to a company without any experience in medical supplies, the car import firm RR7, to acquire one million 3M masks that were never delivered, since those that tried to import were blocked by Customs for being counterfeits.
The Police suspects that Conrado Domínguez, who resigned in November 2022 after being charged in this matter, could have taken part of a commission of 100,000 euros from that contract signed in 2020 in favor of the company RR7 United, according to a report from the Economic Crime Unit (UDEF) of the Police reported by the newspaper Canarias 7.
Earlier this week, on Monday, Domínguez exercised his right not to testify when summoned by the European Prosecutor's Office in Madrid, according to legal sources after his appearance.
Despite the first incident with RR7 (the blocking of fake masks in Customs), the SCS did not terminate its contract, but Conrado Domínguez authorized the company to be given the opportunity to supply another batch of masks, but this one did not arrive either.
The European Prosecutor's Office requested the instruction of this case because the purchase file of the masks to RR7 states that they were paid with European funds. Until that moment, the Court number 7 of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria was in charge, which already took a statement as accused to Domínguez on September 29, 2022.
Two months later, with the case still in Gran Canaria, the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office asked the judge to arrest the former director of the SCS and access his emails and the memory of his mobile phone, for fear that he would destroy evidence, but the judge did not accept it.
For these facts, the administrator of RR7, Rayco Rubén González, is accused of aggravated fraud and Conrado Domínguez has been charged with crimes of prevarication and influence peddling, of which the former director of Economic Resources of the SCS is also accused.
In addition to Domínguez, the UDEF report concludes that there were four other alleged commission agents in the 'Masks case': the intermediaries of the operation Lucas Cruz, Ihsan Mahmoud Mohamed Al Sabbagh, Samuel Machín and Oswaldo Lastras.
This is the second search that the Judicial Police carries out in the SCS in less than a month to investigate the funds spent on purchases of sanitary material in the first months of the covid-19 pandemic, which are already the subject of three criminal cases (the 'Masks case', the 'Koldo case' and an alleged tax fraud involving the president of UD Las Palmas, Miguel Ángel Ramírez).
The Canarian Minister of Health, Esther Monzón, confirmed on April 11 that agents of the Civil Guard acting as the Judicial Police had appeared the day before in her department by order of the European Prosecutor's Office to request more documents, reports and data relating to the period of 2020-2021.
According to the Minister, in that first search the agents took additional files to those already held by the Prosecutor's Office, requested detailed information on the people who intervened in the different phases of processing each of them and wanted to visit the warehouses where there was surplus material from that stage.