New judicial setback for José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero in the National Court. Judge José Luis Calama, who is investigating the case in which the former Prime Minister is being investigated for allegedly receiving illegal commissions in the public bailout of the airline Plus Ultra, has issued a ruling endorsing the Economic and Fiscal Crime Unit (UDEF) to expand the investigation into the former PSOE leader if new evidence arises about “facts that present criminal plausibility.” The judge’s ruling comes after Zapatero had requested that a recent police report be removed from the case, which indicated that the former president received 200,000 euros from the Peruvian Grupo Gloria for allegedly influencing high-ranking officials in Bolivia, including President Luis Alberto Arce, to resolve their legal issues in that country. The UDEF pointed out that the former socialist leader received the money through an intermediary company, Focus Social Research, as consultancy work which was allegedly actually an intermediation to prevent the business group from paying a fine of 107 million dollars (about 93 million euros).
One day after learning of that report, Zapatero submitted a document requesting Judge Calama to “return the document to the police unit” and that it not remain in the case file “as it concerns facts unrelated to those investigated here [the Plus Ultra bailout] and having been analyzed as a result of an unauthorized and prospective investigation.” The former president argued that in previous reports, investigators had not attributed a criminal origin to the receipt of those 200,000 euros which, he insisted, were the result of his professional activity. In this regard, the politician’s defense emphasized that the UDEF had also not considered Focus Social Research part of any business scheme in its initial reports, so it considered unjustified that payments from the same were now being investigated. Zapatero also asked the judge to explicitly delimit the scope of the inquiries and to order the police to stick to the facts recorded in the order under which he was charged.
In his ruling, dated this Wednesday, Judge Calama rejects that the appearance of the 200,000-euro payment to Zapatero is the result “of an indiscriminate scrutiny of the life” of the former president and, therefore, of a prospective investigation (initiated without objective facts and thus prohibited by law), “but the natural consequence of the analysis of evidence validly obtained within the framework of judicial proceedings already underway and which, by their very nature, allow facts initially unforeseen but endowed with criminal plausibility to emerge.” “The prohibition of prospective investigations does not prevent the investigation 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 perpetrator, but by the facts that emerge from the agreed proceedings,” adds the judge. In fact, when the former PSOE leader testified as a suspect on June 17, Calama specifically asked him about Focus Social Research, but the former president limited himself to saying that it was not in the case file and that he would not elaborate on what work he had done.
The judge emphasizes that the investigation into Zapatero “was opened on specific indicative facts and, based on legitimately obtained evidence, other financial movements appeared which, by their nature and the relational context of the suspect, are relevant to clarifying the facts.” He accuses the former socialist leader of wanting to shield himself behind the initial order to prevent the investigation from expanding against him. “No unauthorized proceedings have been carried out, nor has a general scrutiny of the suspect’s professional activity been deployed; an economic flow appearing in the evidence sources has been examined and which, due to its amount, origin, and context, may be relevant to determining whether there were illicit considerations, undue influences, or economic returns linked to the relationships already under investigation,” the judge notes in reference to the payments from the Peruvian company.
“That José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero participates in conferences or receives remuneration for consulting does not exclude that certain payments may have a different nature, and precisely for that reason they must be analyzed when they emerge from the seized documentation,” adds the judge, who then highlights that “the information comes from evidence sources obtained with judicial authorization; its analysis does not exceed the scope of the investigation; no illegitimate intrusion into privacy has occurred; and there is no trace of a general investigation into the life of the suspect José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero.” For all these reasons, he concludes that the UDEF report “is relevant, its incorporation is legitimate, and its content is relevant to clarifying facts that present criminal plausibility.” The judge’s decision is not final and can be appealed.
In the document now endorsed by the judge, the UDEF recorded new findings found on the mobile phone of Zapatero’s secretary, Gertrudis Alcázar, and in the agenda of the former president that was seized during the search of his office. From the examination of both, the police are aware of meetings and contacts with “high political spheres of Bolivia,” such as President Arce, the Ministers of Economy and Justice, Marcelo Montenegro and César Adalid, respectively, or the State Attorney General, Ricardo Condori. The report reflects that Zapatero signed a consultancy contract for 200,000 euros in three installments whose purpose, allegedly, had more to do with an exercise of influence: resolving the judicial problems in Bolivia of Grupo Gloria ―a conglomerate of companies based in Lima (Peru) with investments in American countries in multiple sectors such as food, cement, paper, cardboard, or transport― where one of its companies, Soboce (Sociedad Boliviana de Cementos S. A.), had been ordered to pay a multimillion-dollar fine for unfair competition.
The agents highlight that from the analyzed conversations, it appears that the services provided by Zapatero “are not really related” to Focus Social Research (the company that pays him), which “would be oriented to marketing.” The UDEF added that this discovery supports “the indications of the existence of a criminal organization, led by José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, which, taking advantage of his contacts and international public influence, would be dedicated to the exercise of illicit influence for the benefit of various clients.”
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