The details of the judicial summary have only worsened the procedural situation of the former head of government José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, who in a week must appear before Judge José Luis Calama to try to convince him that everything stated by himself, the UDEF, and the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office is a series of errors or malicious interpretations. About thirty jewels kept in the safe of his official office were seized by the Police, who must now appraise them.
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His secretary, also investigated as a member of the network led by the former leader, resisted handing over the keys when the agents burst into his office on Ferraz Street (Madrid), right in front of the PSOE headquarters. Gertrudis Alcaraz claimed they belonged to Sonsoles Espinosa, Zapatero’s wife, coming from an inheritance. As a detail, inside the safe there was also a bag labeled “Presidency of Government,” inside which there were gold earrings, bracelets, rings, several watches, one Omega, and a pendant with the number 13, among other luxury belongings.
One of the former socialist leader’s objectives will be to exonerate his family from any illegality
While waiting to appraise the jewels and verify the reality of the inheritance story, what holds the most value for the investigation are the two dozen seized agendas, hard drives, and pen drives. That office searched by the Police was, according to investigations, one of the nerve centers of the operations carried out by Zapatero. There was another: the former president’s private residence. According to a report from the economic and financial crimes unit (UDEF) of the Police contained in the summary, the former leader would have used his home “for sensitive dealings and receipt of shipments.” This duality of operational centers would aim, according to investigations, to “maintain opacity.”
For the agents, Zapatero’s office “was not merely an administrative space, but from there it operated as a nucleus for issuing instructions that would be channeled through computer supports from the staff’s equipment at his disposal.” The Police indicate that the person executing those instructions was the secretary “through the email account of presidentezapatero. However, the former head of government’s residence would have become a kind of refuge, “an ideal space for channeling and safeguarding the strategic planning of instructions involving greater sensitivity.”
The origin of the case is an investigation in Switzerland and France against several businessmen
The investigators are already analyzing this documentation. It is key because, for now, what they have are messages from trusted people of Zapatero talking about him, bank movements destined for his accounts or those of his daughters’ company, Whathefav, and a series of invoices that in December were seized from other investigated individuals during the first phase of the operation, including his friend Julio Martínez Martínez.
Martínez was not just a friend. He is the person who has been supplying him with large amounts of money for reports or consulting through his company Análisis Relevante. Specifically, he would have received 490,000 euros in four years. Additionally, this businessman, who took advantage of Zapatero’s relationships forged during his years in government, also helped the former president’s family by hiring his daughters to layout reports for a substantial amount. The contract, which is part of the case, was signed on June 1, 2020.
The investigators claim he used his residence “to plan sensitive strategies”
With the documents now seized, both in Zapatero’s office and his daughters’ office, as well as from the analysis of their emails, the judge will seek to link these invoices with the influence network allegedly directed and led by the former socialist leader.
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When on June 2 he testifies as an investigated person for leading this scheme, Zapatero has a priority mission to dissociate his daughters Laura and Alba from any irregular operation. The UDEF maintains that the invoices issued by Whathefav were prepared ad hoc to justify income that had nothing to do with their work as layout designers. The suspicions are that Zapatero used his daughters’ company to hide the commission he received from Plus Ultra in exchange for intervening on its behalf to get the Government, led by Pedro Sánchez, to grant him 53 million euros, in addition to other tasks for other businessmen, mainly Venezuelans.
A money laundering network with branches in Spain raised alarms over the Plus Ultra fraud
The Executive always defended the legality of this aid by considering that this company was strategic and could not close in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic. However, the background is that its executives had links with Venezuelan magnates, who in turn had enriched themselves with corruption in Venezuela, and who used Spanish public funds to launder and invest in a gold business.
Rodríguez Zapatero has fallen due to several circumstances, but he was not the prey to follow when this investigation started in 2024. The reality is that it all began with the Peruvian businessman Felipe Baca and Simon Leendert, pursued by Swiss and French justice for laundering funds in their countries. They detected that part of the money came from Spain and asked the Spanish Prosecutor’s Office for help. They conducted raids and searches for them, and new names emerged, such as Rodolfo Reyes, shareholder of Plus Ultra, who is also investigated by the United States. It was soon discovered that public money had been transferred through their companies. Pulling the thread, Reyes led to the company president, and from him to Julio Martínez Martínez, his company Análisis Relevante, and another conglomerate of companies, presumably without real activity. When investigators looked more closely at this businessman, they saw that among his partners was a person formerly linked to the National Intelligence Center during Zapatero’s time or a high-ranking official promoted in the socialist government.
The former leader sees mere “absurd conjectures”
Through his authorized spokesperson, Luis Arroyo, former president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero yesterday considered the indications collected in the reports of the economic and tax crime unit (UDEF) of the National Police as mere “absurd conjectures.” Arroyo, current president of the Ateneo de Madrid, who worked in Moncloa when Zapatero was head of government as chief of staff to the Secretaries of State for Communication Miguel Barroso and Fernando Moraleda, explained that the former president is “very surprised” by the “assumptions” contained in the indictment order by Judge José Luis Calama and questioned the attribution of being “the head” of a hierarchical organization “that controlled financial flows.” In his appearance on the TVE program Mañaneros 360, Arroyo assured that the former president is “eager” to defend his reputation and truth in the hearing scheduled for June 2 at the National Court. The spokesperson attributed the accusations “to the political context” of 2023, when Zapatero began, “very prominently, to defend Sánchez’s Government.” Additionally, Arroyo also emphasized that the socialist leader has worked since 2012 “in many cases, some paid and others not,” and that “he has access to certain people” by having been president, although his activities have been “perfectly legal” and declared to the Tax Agency.
The net around Zapatero was tightening, but there was still not enough evidence until March this year, as stated in an order signed by Judge Calama, when he asked for help from the Civil Guard’s central operative unit (UCO). Conversations of the commission agent Víctor de Aldama were discovered in which he spoke about commissions collected by Zapatero for the Plus Ultra bailout. The judge asked investigators from the Mascarillas case – a case against former minister José Luis Ábalos – to provide all references about the former head of government, and that is when the accelerator started. Two months later, his office was searched. Still, at the beginning of March this year, the instructor did not mention Zapatero in his resolutions. At the beginning of March, the instructor already maintained that in 2020 Plus Ultra activated a line of contacts “at the governmental level and another at a less publicly exposed influential level” that reveals the existence of a “transnational criminal organization, stably structured and with division of functions, whose main purpose is money laundering from illicit activities committed both nationally and abroad.” At that time, the magistrate already hinted that this organization would use cash to “take care of judges, police, and officials” and of its intention to “touch Ábalos.” From what can be inferred, the airline also reached the then Minister of Transport, but preferred Rodríguez Zapatero as the winning horse.
By then, in 2020, the former president had already entered Venezuelan politics and business, and his influences had already spread. Now he will have to explain if it is a coincidence that some of the Venezuelan suspects in the initial money laundering operation have paid certain transfers to his daughters for layout work. For the judge and the Prosecutor’s Office, it is not a coincidence, but there is an influence network behind it. On the 2nd, he will give the appropriate explanations.
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