Oysters and champagne. And with large doses of mockery. This is how the Plus Ultra leadership celebrated the airline’s bailout, with a public aid of 53 million euros, which is the basis of the judicial case in the National Court in which the former Prime Minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, is under investigation. This is demonstrated by a photograph sent by the company’s CEO, Roberto Roselli, to Julio Martínez, a friend of the former socialist leader, in a restaurant, accompanied by the message: Warning to navigators: SEPI does not approve those expenses.” To which they respond in the chat with a “Relax, that comes out of the 1% [referring to the commission that would have been paid for the bailout]”.
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The WhatsApp conversation appears in a report from the Economic and Fiscal Crime Unit (UDEF) of the National Police submitted to the case, which La Vanguardia has accessed. On March 2, 2021, a week before Pedro Sánchez’s government officially approved the bailout of Plus Ultra, a lunch was held attended by Julio Martínez Sola, president of the company, and Roberto Roselli, its CEO. At that lunch, they sent a photograph in a group called PU [for Plus Ultra] taken on a restaurant terrace.
For the investigators, that “that comes out of the 1%” is directly related to the contract signed between Plus Ultra and Idella Consulenza Stratégica, managed by Martínez himself, under which, if the public aid was granted, 1% plus VAT of the amount would be received through his company. The case instructor, José Luis Calama, points out that those amounts could have ended up in accounts of the former Prime Minister, which have been blocked by the National Court.
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This is the thesis of the UDEF agents, as reflected in the report that reached the instructor’s hands: “The main final beneficiary of the funds obtained by the network would be José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and the company WHATHEFAV, whose administrators and partners are his daughters Alba and Laura Rodríguez Espinosa, again justifying the transfer of funds through contracts that would serve as mere documentary justification.”
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