In 2020, when it was presided over by the current leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the Xunta de Galicia bought some of the masks for which Isabel Díaz Ayuso’s partner, Alberto González Amador, pocketed 2 million euros in commissions that year.
This was confirmed to elDiario.es by Gumersindo Cachafeiro, founder and president of Mape, the company that paid 42 million for medical supplies from China to FCS, a Catalan firm to which González Amador charged 4.5% commissions for acting as an intermediary in the purchase of that material.
Until now, it was unknown who the final buyer of the goods ordered from FCS by the Galician company Mape, a company with extensive experience in the supply of medical supplies, was. Now it is confirmed that at least one public administration ended up acquiring that material.
At Mape, Quirón director Fernando Camino is a board member, a key figure in the professional rise of Ayuso’s partner. Both are linked by their relationship in the private healthcare giant (González Amador’s main payer for years) or a lawyer from León who manages the luxury penthouse in Madrid enjoyed by the confessed fraudster and the president of the Community of Madrid.
“90-95% of the merchandise I bought that year [2020] “I bought it from FCS and sold it to all the Spanish companies, public and private,” says Cachafeiro. In a telephone conversation with this newspaper, the businessman emphasizes that “neither Quirón nor anyone related to any of these companies has bought that merchandise from me. The Community of Madrid, zero.”
But the Xunta de Galicia did: “We never sold them anything until the pandemic, or after.” However, with the health emergency and governments around the world desperately looking for masks, gloves and other protective equipment, the Executive then headed by Núñez Feijóo asked them for help “because they need it, just like everyone else. They did not have authorization to import and we lent them ours without any kind of compensation.” With these authorizations, he explains, they were able to supply the Xunta with everything from masks to disposable material for respirators.
The Xunta de Galicia, in response to questions from elDiario.es about the commission charged by González Amador, stated that “he acquired medical supplies from a company specialising in the distribution of medical supplies, which was also selected as a supplier by the central government within its framework agreement.”
Furthermore, a spokesperson for the Galician Government emphasises that whether the company “obtained the medical supplies directly from the manufacturer or through another intermediary company is a matter that concerns only the supplier and does not in any way involve the Xunta”. The same sources insist that “the Xunta’s supplier is the medical supplies company Mape. The Xunta’s relationship is with this company”, ruling out any relationship with Isabel Díaz Ayuso’s current partner.
The Galician Government took many months to publish the contracts awarded to Mape in 2020, a year in which this firm was the one that received the most emergency contracts from the Galician Health Service: 10 awards worth more than 10 million.
Of that figure, 4.3 million were for the supply of masks through three emergency contracts made between April and June 2020. These contracts did not appear on the Xunta’s contracting platform until 11 October 2022. They were not published in the Official Journal of the EU until February 2023, almost three years later. The award decisions are not available.
The delay in publishing these awards was a general trend in Sergas’ emergency contracts, which failed to comply with the legal obligation to publicize them. This was highlighted by the Council of Auditors in a report that warned that Mape charged 37% more than other suppliers in 2020. Cachafeiro believes that the supervisory body “has to look at it.” “If I bought at a high price, I sold at a high price. They cannot accuse me of overpricing,” he defends himself.
“No relationship”
“We do not have and have not had any business relationship with Ayuso’s boyfriend,” says the founder of Mape, who regrets that it is claimed that his company made González Amador a millionaire in 2020. Although he is aware of the many ties that unite him with the Quirón executive Fernando Camino.
The Galician businessman has remained silent in recent months, following the scandal surrounding the Madrid president’s partner, which has affected his company due to the position of director of the head of Quirón Prevención. Camino has always refused to speak to elDiario.es.
“I have nothing to do with anyone’s commission,” says Cachafeiro, who explains his relationship with Camino, whom he has known “since 2015”: the Quirón executive “is my friend, I know him through his wife’s family and his brother-in-law, who have long-standing pharmacies in León.” Since 2019, he has been a member of the board of directors of Mape, as an external director, “because he runs a company called Grupo Quirón and he is one of the great experts in the business world” and in the prevention business.
“Neither he nor anyone related to him or his family ever had any shares here,” he said. “I still believe in him. He is an exquisite, scrupulous, correct guy.”
Cachafeiro says that when it came to light that González Amador managed a company in the tax haven of Panama created by Camino until 2022, he asked him for explanations. “That company never invoiced anything, he told me. I told him: that is suspicious. I do not stop being friends with my friends because someone says so; but if it is proven that they are not what they say they are, I will not support anyone who is not of the same mentality as me.”
“I told him that if he is accused of anything, he will be out of the council the next day.” The message he conveyed to him was: “I am not asking you to leave now because it would seem that I am blaming or penalizing you.” “So far, nothing has happened,” he stressed.
Cachafeiro says he is unaware that González Amador paid 500,000 euros to Camino in December 2020, after pocketing those two million in commissions, for a company in his wife’s name that did not invoice even 30,000 euros and had hardly any activity.
“Of course it surprises me, I’m not going to say no.” “There must be something about the company,” he ventures. “They will know how they did it and where they did it.” González Amador presented the purchase of that company, which was dedicated to beauty treatments and which he used as a front to defraud with the extra income from Quirón, to the Treasury as a “gamble.”
Cachafeiro admits that he also asked Camino about the company that bought the luxury penthouse in Madrid, which is managed by a lawyer from León who is very close to the Quirón executive who represented González Amador in the tax inspection. The answer he received, he explains, was that “it is a coincidence that he brought this to Alberto.” “I do not know this lawyer,” he says.
He also says he knows nothing about the mysterious loan of 955,000 euros that the company received in 2023, when it bought the luxury apartment in cash. He also does not explain why another advisor from León has always managed the accounts of Maxwell Cremona, González Amador’s main company.
Since the case broke out, Cachafeiro had only attended to The Countrywhich he told in March, just after revealing elDiario.es The tax fraud of González Amadorthat the procedures to buy the masks from FCS began in March 2020. This version, which Cachafeiro maintains and which the Catalan company also maintained, clashes head-on with what Ayuso’s partner maintained before the Treasury.
During the inspection by the Tax Agency, González Amador confirmed that he had made arrangements to bring in this material in January 2020, two months before the outbreak of the health crisis in Spain, through videoconferences and physical meetings in New York and with the participation of a company based in Florida, Inteconn.
“A scam”
Cachafeiro is very critical of the tax fraud confessed by Ayuso’s partner: “For any coherent person, it is a scam. If you collect two million and do not want to pay for them… let’s call it what we want. It’s an outrage.” “We have always collaborated with what the Tax Agency has asked us to do.”
The businessman downplays the reformulation of the 2023 accounts carried out by Mape in April, when the scandal had already broken out, and categorically denies any connection with this case. He stresses that this modification, a relatively uncommon manoeuvre, is due to the decision to distribute all of last year’s profits (1.5 million) as dividends when the accounts had already been formulated in a first version.
It also clarifies the identity of the buyer of the 5% of the capital that the company sold from its treasury stock in May 2022 for half a million euros. This is the general manager of Mape, Víctor Mosquera.
Regarding the supplier who was paid 1.5 million in 2020 for medical supplies that never arrived, it is an Italian company that ordered 20% of the goods in advance. “They had to deliver a million masks within seven days” for a client “who wanted to donate them to hospitals”. The masks never arrived, the incident was reported to the Civil Guard and the case was left in the hands of Interpol. “A few weeks ago they told us to give up the money because the three partners of that company do not have the capacity to pay it.”
Mape started out in 1998 as a consultancy firm. In 2007 it made the leap to the distribution of healthcare products, parapharmacy items, drugs and other products that it sells to large companies, public institutions and private medical centres. Its clients are hospitals, healthcare centres, companies, mutual insurance companies, prevention centres… Among them, Inditex, Iberdrola, Caixabank, Repsol, Mercadona, Telefónica or Quirón Prevención itself and public bodies such as the Community of Madrid or the Xunta, according to its website.
“We work with all prevention services and large companies.” “Whenever we could, during the pandemic, if we had merchandise, we sold it to our clients, public and private,” explains the founder and largest shareholder, who stresses that they work for any administration, regardless of political colour. “I often make mistakes, but I try not to commit irregularities.”
Source: www.eldiario.es
