The Police intervened during the search carried out on October 24, 2024, in the office of lawyer Miguel Palomero, one of the alleged suspects in the Plus Ultra case, a mobile phone containing a chat called “Danilo-Spain” in which the conversations through the WhatsApp application of the lawyer with the Venezuelan businessman Danilo Diazgranados Mangalo, investigated by the French justice system, were supposedly recorded, in which “someone called ‘Zorro’, ‘Z’ or ‘ZZZZ” is mentioned. The investigators have identified the person referred to by these three expressions as the former Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. This was detailed by the Madrid judge Esperanza Collazos, who initiated the investigation into the alleged irregularities in the granting of a 53 million euro aid to the airline, in the order of February 23 ―and made public this Wednesday after the lifting of the secrecy of the proceedings― by which she recused herself to the National Court so that this judicial body would continue the investigation.
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According to this resolution, “in said chat specific acts over several years are evidenced that suggest the commission of crimes of bribery, influence peddling, corruption in business by a hierarchical organization with a vocation for permanence.” Among these acts, the judge explicitly cites the alleged “influence” of the former PSOE leader “before the senior executives of [the Spanish oil company] Repsol so that Danilo Diazgranados obtained in December 2023 the distribution of lubricants of that company in Venezuela,” which is considered to “constitute the crime of corruption in business.”
In the part of the case made public this Wednesday ―there are still two separate pieces that remain secret― this alleged mediation by the former PSOE leader is not being investigated. The oil company has denied to this newspaper having any link with Diazgranados. “Repsol strongly denies any commercial or other type of relationship with Danilo Díazgranados Manglano. Repsol operates under strict principles of transparency, integrity, and respect for legality in all the countries where it is present.”
Days later, on March 3, the National Court judge José Luis Calama accepted to take charge of the case in an order in which he mentions the existence of this chat between Palomero and Diazgranados, although the magistrate does not mention Zapatero and limits himself to stating that in this exchange of messages “there appear conversations that evidence the existence [of] a chain of favors and gratifications that allow inferring the commission of crimes of influence peddling related to public officials.” Diazgranados, resident in a luxurious urbanization in Madrid, is mentioned in various writings of the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office with the “alleged role of executive manager linked to the recruitment of occasional clients of the structure.” The French justice system is investigating him for his alleged connection to a money laundering network.
Judge Calama highlights that from Palomero’s WhatsApp conversations “it is evident that the organization controls large amounts of money from different illicit sources, and that these, according to the French Prosecutor’s investigation, are invested in the stock market, later being reintegrated as lawful to their clients, acting as a pseudo-bank.” And he talks about a complex structure with “crimes committed both in Spain and abroad, use of shell companies based in different countries, and the existence of a transnational criminal network” that would justify the case being assumed by the National Court.
A commissioner, pointed out
In Judge Collazos’s order, alleged contacts of the network with the National Police commissioner Jesús María Gómez Martín are also pointed out, who is accused of having “allegedly facilitated” that at the Cuatro Vientos airfield (Madrid) “businesses with illicit origin were carried out.” The resolution adds that during the search of the Plus Ultra headquarters a business card of this senior officer was found and “his [phone] number handwritten on the front.” In the part of the case known so far, it is not recorded that this police officer is formally under investigation.
The commissioner, who is currently the chief of police in the Canary Islands, was the highest police authority at Barajas airport on the night of January 20, 2020, when the controversial stopover in Madrid of the then Venezuelan vice president Delcy Rodríguez took place. Judge Collazos’s resolution links this commissioner with a “suggestion” made during a conversation on May 4, 2021, between the lawyer and Koldo García, then “right-hand man” of the former Minister of Transport José Luis Ábalos. The latter was with the current Venezuelan president during the controversial stopover at the Madrid airfield that night in 2020.
In Judge Calama’s order, the commissioner is also mentioned, although without naming him. The National Court magistrate limits himself to noting that in the case there are “other conversations related to airport transit, related to a police officer, conversations referring to gifts to people holding positions of power in different areas who would have provided some favor or service to Danilo Díazgranados, and others that allow inferring the commission of a crime of corruption in business through different high-level contacts.”
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