The judge argues for expanding new lines against Zapatero and denies that his life is being scrutinized

The judge of the National Court José Luis Calama has rejected the attempt by former Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero to stop a new line of investigation opened for another alleged influence peddling in favor of a Peruvian company, Grupo Gloria.

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Zapatero had asked the judge to close the new report from the Economic and Fiscal Crime Unit (UDEF) of the Police regarding the alleged receipt of 200,000 euros in exchange for trying to mediate or influence in favor of this business group, in several multimillion-dollar lawsuits maintained with the Public Administration of Bolivia.

For the former president, this is a general case against him because this new payment appeared within the framework of the investigation opened against him as the leader of a criminal organization. For the defense, the company through which the payment was made, Focus Social Research SAC, “was never considered part of any business plot in the initial reports, so it is unjustified that the police now direct their attention to that professional relationship, the result of an investigation without limits or judicial authorization.”

Calama denies such an extreme: “The appearance of transfers linked to Focus Social Research SAC is not the result of an indiscriminate audit of the life of the investigated José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, but the natural consequence of the analysis of validly obtained sources of evidence within the framework of judicial proceedings that were already underway.”

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In an order, accessed by La Vanguardia, the magistrate explains that the investigation opened has allowed facts initially not foreseen to emerge “but endowed with criminal plausibility.”

“The prohibition of prospective investigations does not prevent the instruction from advancing, deepening, or expanding when the incorporated data reveal new lines of inquiry related to possible crimes of influence peddling, or other criminal offenses, because the criminal investigation is not defined by the author but by the facts that emerge from the agreed proceedings,” he clarifies.

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