A message sent to a group of journalists by Isabel Díaz Ayuso’s team revealed this Thursday what the Community of Madrid had not wanted to admit until now: that the brother of the regional president charged Priviet Sportive – the company that took a hand-picked contract of 1.5 million euros in masks – 283,000 euros for different jobs for the company. It is a figure very similar to the one that the until then leader of the PP, Pablo Casado, gave in an interview on Cadena Cope a week before when he assured that it was 286,000 euros and spoke of a possible crime of “influence peddling”. Casado also insinuated then that Daniel Alcázar, a friend of Tomás Díaz Ayuso and owner of the company, could have acted as a “front man” for the brother of the Madrid president by having used her company as an intermediary to be able to contract with the Community of Madrid.
The words of Casado, who has never revealed where those bank and tax data came from to the PP, had an immediate response from Ayuso herself. The Madrid leader entered the same radio program minutes later and assured that she did not know where the president of her party had gotten that figure, amounts that she said she did not know. Just barely a couple of hours later, the Madrid president issued a folio and a half statement on the letterhead of the Community of Madrid to give another figure: 55,850 euros, which would correspond to the commission that her brother would have charged for bringing from China the masks that bought by the regional government. In that same letter, Ayuso mentioned three other invoices that Priviet Sportive, the company of her family friend, would have paid her brother, but did not give details of the amounts. She argued that it was about other jobs that her brother had done for that company owned by a friend of his from the town and that Tomás Díaz Ayuso had the right to his “privacy”.
Everything changes this Thursday with an argument sent from the president’s team to a group of journalists. “On the information that continues to come out regarding the Priviet Sportive contract: Tomás Díaz Ayuso invoices this company for a total amount of 283,000 euros in 2020. This is substantiated in four invoices, corresponding to four different jobs,” begins the message sent by the team de Ayuso to “certain journalists” in which he admits the figure given by Casado, as explained to elDiario.es by a spokesman for the regional president. In the same letter sent by whatsapp, it is clarified that “this is substantiated in four invoices, corresponding to four different jobs.” And they insist: “of these four invoices, only one of them has to do with a contract from the Community of Madrid. That invoice is 55,850 euros, plus VAT.”
Although the president herself spoke on several occasions last Friday on Cadena COPE that her brother would have charged a “commission”, the argument sent to certain journalists also tries to eliminate that word from the collective imagination. “The invoice to Priviet Sportive is not a commission for obtaining the contract from the Administration, but the collection of the steps taken to obtain the material in China and its transfer to Madrid. In other words, it is a consideration for their work,” they say.
With that message, the Community of Madrid admits for the first time that Tomás Díaz Ayuso invoiced 283,000 euros from Priviet Sportive, an amount that, he assures, is charged in four invoices – which have not been shown – for four jobs. The still president of the PP encrypted the commission of the brother of the Madrid president at 286,000 euros, only three thousand euros more than what is now admitted.
elDiario.es has asked the president’s team what criteria were followed to send that argument to some journalists. A spokesman for Ayuso assures that “this is a clarification to certain journalists who are accepting that Tomás Díaz Ayuso invoiced a total of 283,000 euros with the Community of Madrid.” “It is a clarification in relation to that to specify that there is only one invoice with the Madrid Community (the one from last Friday’s statement) and that the global billing responds to the total of all the jobs that are the four bills that were discussed in Friday’s statement,” he adds.
A journalist from the program Ya es Mediodía, which is broadcast on Telecinco, was the first to publish that version of the Community of Madrid, and later the same version was ratified by an editor of El Confidencialwhich contacted the regional government to verify this information.
The contract in question awarded to the friend of the Díaz Ayuso family was awarded without public tender on April 1, 2020, taking advantage of the emergency procedures of the first state of alarm. Priviet Sportive was dedicated to the textile and livestock business, and had no previous experience in the health sector, nor had it worked before with the Community of Madrid. This award by the urgency procedure is the first and only contractual relationship between this company and the regional administration. The opposition has already filed complaints with the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office, which this week reported that it has already opened an investigation into that contract.
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