Man arrested for stealing, selling 2 million face masks
A Business man has
been arrested by police after he stole up to 2 million face masks from a
medical supplies company that had gone into liquidation .
The business man
sold the masks to his contacts in Portugal after keeping stock at a locked
warehouse on an industrial estate in the Galician cathedral city of Santiago de
Compostela., Spain according to reports emanating from Spain.
Police investigators
say the man didn't only steal masks but also stole other protective equipment
including surgical gloves .
The Spanish
government had to buy face masks from China in an emergency purchase. as it was
left without enough masks when people became infected with coronavirus and
hundreds of people began to die every day in Spain.
According to
investigators the theft is said to have occurred at the end of February.
Alfonso Rueda,
vice-president of the regional Xunta de Galicia regional government, visited
the theft site on Monday and said only around 100 out of the two million face
masks stored there had been left untouched.
He said: ‘The police
received a tip-off that there could have been valuable health equipment here
which would have been so necessary in the fight against Covid-19. ‘It had been
cleaned out by the time they arrived. We calculate two million face masks have
been stolen. Only the boxes are left.
‘There are also
empty boxes which contained surgical gloves but we don’t know at this stage
exactly how many are missing.’
He added: ‘The
police investigation has led to the identification and arrest of the main
suspect, a person from Santiago who has already appeared in court.’
The suspect, a
director at a well-known local real estate firm has been arrested.
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