National Police agents have arrested three men, aged 45, 50 and 55, all with police records, for the crimes of fraud, misappropriation, document forgery and false accusation after allegedly defrauding more than one million euros with sanitary protection material to face the pandemic, the PPEs, during the coronavirus lockdown.
The investigated, one of them from Gran Canaria, introduced their companies, which were based in Andalusia and Cantabria, into the distribution chain that had been created nationwide to supply healthcare material to various public health services, operating mainly in Gran Canaria, Galicia and Madrid.
These companies, acting under the commercial umbrella of the distribution in Spain of PPEs from China, defrauded and diverted funds worth more than one million euros between March and May 2020, as reported by the National Police in a press release.
These arrests occurred after the events were reported by a commercial intermediary from the capital of Gran Canaria in charge of providing basic healthcare material to various public health services, medical centers and hospitals during the first lockdown, which is why the Investigating Court No. 7 of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria ordered the investigation to the agents of the Economic and Fiscal Crime Unit (UDEF).
Fraudulent operations
The UDEF agents thus began the investigation that allowed them to detect numerous fraudulent commercial actions carried out in chain by two companies, all disguised as failed or incomplete import operations of sanitary material from China.
Specifically, 400,000 sanitary protection items should have arrived at medical centers and public hospitals of the national health network, however the funds destined to provide basic sanitary material to the health services of Galicia and Madrid, around 1,055,182 euros, were diverted.
According to investigators, this amount was defrauded, diverted and disposed of privately by the three businessmen, who split and transferred the monetary flows to private bank accounts (some of them in the name of front men) and companies under ambiguous or fraudulent concepts, or used directly in the acquisition of high-value movable property such as premium vehicles.
In light of these events, two people were arrested in Santander, while the third is in prison serving a sentence as a result of a previous court case. However, the police investigation is still open and further police actions or arrests are not ruled out.
Television appearances
One of the detainees, who responds to the initials of J.M.A., intervened during the pandemic in a television program in which he assured that what he did was to put Chinese factories - which made the PPEs - in intermediation with Spanish hospitals, according to sources close to the investigation told Europa Press.
Specifically, in his intervention he assured that the material, as it arrived at the Spanish customs, went to geriatric hospitals.
