The judge of the National Court José Luis Calama has authorized the UDEF, through the SEPBLAC money laundering service, to analyze several dozen accounts of the former Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, his daughters, Laura and Alba Rodríguez Espinosa, his secretary, Gertrudis Alcázar, his friend Julio Martínez Martínez, and several investigated companies amid suspicions that all of them could have hidden funds or moved money of illicit origin.
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In an order, to which La Vanguardia has had access, the magistrate agrees to the request of the judicial police amid suspicions that funds were being hidden. For the judge, “the set of indications reveals a hierarchical structure, with José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero as the main beneficiary, Julio Martínez Martínez as manager and channeler, and a corporate network designed to hide the origin and destination of funds, justify payments through fictitious consultancy contracts, and dilute traceability through internal movements lacking economic logic.”
He explains that the clients −Plus Ultra, Inteligencia Prospectiva, Softgestor− act as sources of covert financing, while companies such as Caletón Consultores, Summer Wind or Zenzap “function as instruments to introduce funds and redistribute them towards Zapatero, Whathefav (company of his daughters) and companies in Julio Martínez’s environment.”
The resolution points out that the investigation places at its core an “organized and stable structure,” led by the former Prime Minister, “oriented towards the exercise of illicit influences in favor of certain clients, who would remunerate such services through simulated consultancy contracts.” In this way, it would be possible to justify payments whose real destination would be Rodríguez Zapatero and the company Whathefav, managed by his daughters.
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This operation —the resolution states— is articulated through the corporate network controlled by Julio Martínez Martínez, a friend of the former Prime Minister since 2011 and who acknowledged last week before the judge that his company, Análisis Relevante, was actually directed by Zapatero and served to channel his profits from his consultancy work.
For Calama, Martínez does not limit himself to channeling funds, “but acts as a trusted person of Rodríguez Zapatero, direct interlocutor with clients and functional manager of the network.”
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On the other hand, he points to the former Prime Minister’s secretary, María Gertrudis Alcázar, and maintains that “she constantly intervenes in communications, documentation and agenda, with sufficient knowledge of the development of influence activities.” The magistrate explains that most of the financial information comes from tax data declared by the interested parties themselves, pending verification through direct access to banking entities, and therefore must be complemented with this other information.
The secretary acquired a property without financing
The instructor holds that much of Zapatero’s profits from Análisis Relevante, as well as from other clients, ended up in the same account, used to prepay a mortgage loan of 500,000 euros through a transfer of 498,000 euros, after the acquisition of a property for 580,000 euros.
For its part, the order states that Whathefav is the main recipient of funds from Julio Martínez Martínez’s corporate environment after Zapatero himself, with Zapatero himself appearing as authorized on its accounts.
Thus, it adds that Martínez’s corporate network, made up of at least 27 companies, “shows signs of unitary control: matching addresses, broad corporate purposes and simultaneous corporate modifications.” Despite this, in 2020 and 2021 there are no personal accounts in Spain in his name, “which suggests the use of foreign payment methods, cash or accounts of his companies.”
Regarding the secretary, the judge says that, although no income from the network to her has been detected, “her functional role in the organization justifies the asset analysis.” They have detected that she acquired a property for 132,055 euros without mortgage financing, through periodic payments between 2021 and 2023, “without compensatory operations that explain her economic capacity.”
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