Former Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero has requested the judge of the National Court investigating him for the so-called ‘Plus Ultra case’ not to grant the police the authority for the Anti-Money Laundering Service (SEPBLAC) to expand all the information they need to prepare an analysis of his bank accounts, those of his friend Julio Martínez Martínez, and the company of his daughters – also under investigation – Whathefav.
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In an appeal filed against the latest resolution by José Luis Calama, Zapatero does not oppose the analysis of his accounts because, in his view, this will “dispel the central police thesis, highly speculative, that there would be a whole range of commercial companies that would have served to channel payments to Rodríguez Zapatero.”
However, he asks the magistrate to set limits so that the UDEF cannot have free access to all the content without prior judicial control, and requests that the court clerk be responsible for purging the information that will later be incorporated into the case. “This diligence, demanding information as exhaustive as it is lacking in specificity, seems more akin to a prospective investigation,” his defense adds in the document.
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Furthermore, he considers that the police thesis about a possible channeling of funds between Martínez’s circle and Zapatero has been assumed “prima facie in the judicial resolution, with a very incriminating description and little respect for the right to the presumption of innocence.”
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The former socialist leader intends for Calama to revoke his resolution and render it ineffective until a new one is issued limiting the period of analysis of those accounts – set up to the present – and to withdraw the authorization to the UDEF to expand the information deemed pertinent about the aforementioned banking products.
“And it is evident that the information the UDEF may request additionally regarding bank movements ‘with the maximum level of detail’ involves a potential level of interference with the right to privacy and personal data that cannot be left to the discretion of UDEF agents,” he points out.
In his view, information about Rodríguez Zapatero’s personal and professional life “may be newsworthy and have journalistic and political use interest, but that circumstance cannot lead to the temptation to conduct a generalized search for ‘reprehensible’ conduct, taking advantage of the seizure of sufficient information to contain the entire documented life of a person.” The investigation must focus on specific facts – he adds – and not become a “fishing expedition.”
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