The week that is now ending had an important date marked on the calendar of the Plus Ultra case, in which José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero is being investigated for allegedly leading an illicit influence peddling network that, among other operations, favored the public bailout in 2021 of the airline that gives its name to the case. Judge José Luis Calama had summoned Julio Martínez Martínez, a friend of the former Prime Minister and administrator of Análisis Relevante, the company at the epicenter of the plot, as an investigated party for Tuesday. The appointment was presumed to be decisive given the doubt as to whether the businessman would support Zapatero’s version, who testified in June and stated that he was unaware of the creation and administration of that company and only worked and was paid by it as an external consultant, or if, on the contrary, he would deny that account and corroborate that of the investigators, who place the former president at the helm of the scheme. Martínez Martínez did not wait to appear before the judge and, on the eve of his summons, delivered a document to the Audiencia Nacional in which he offered to collaborate with justice and pointed to Zapatero. This began a chain reaction joined by Julio Martínez Sola and Roberto Roselli, also indicted and until then top executives of the Plus Ultra airline (they resigned this Friday after being summoned by the judge), who attribute maximum responsibility for the events under investigation to the former socialist leader.
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The move by Martínez Martínez, Martínez Sola, and Roselli suggests that the three intend to follow the Aldama route, the path that led the main commission agent in the Koldo case, businessman Víctor de Aldama, to benefit from a significant reduction in sentence after detailing the operation of the network he wove with former minister José Luis Ábalos and Koldo García to profit from the rigging of public contracts. But with a big difference: while Aldama self-incriminated himself in serious crimes and presented himself as the corruptor who fed the former minister’s and his former advisor’s greed for money, Zapatero’s co-defendants do not, for now, admit any illicit act. The businessman reduces his role to that of a subordinate who followed the former president’s orders without suspecting anything illegal, and the former Plus Ultra executives, to that of desperate managers trying to save the company who agreed to pay without asking questions.
Their explanations strengthen part of the judge’s narrative against the former Prime Minister, but they deny the part that implies attributing crimes to them as well and do not clarify important details, such as on whose behalf Zapatero allegedly mediated. The former PSOE leader addressed the businessmen’s statements by granting his first interview last Thursday —on TVE’s Mañaneros 360 program— since his indictment. These are the key points where the judge’s and the defendants’ accounts converge or diverge.
Zapatero’s leadership in Análisis Relevante. This is one of the points where the former Prime Minister has been left alone defending that he was merely an “external consultant” for the company. He reiterated this on TVE, although he did not want to confront the businessman, who confirms Judge Calama’s thesis that Zapatero is “at the apex of the structure” organized around Análisis Relevante and “exercises strategic leadership and maintains high-level institutional and business contacts.” “It is evident that the clients of that consultancy could understand that I was the consultant, but all my work was advisory. I never intended to participate in any company, nor did I sign any contract with any client,” Zapatero assured. According to the former president, only once the company was established did he “accept” to be a consultant. “It seems normal to receive remuneration for that work.”
However, the investigating judge considers that the former socialist leader’s office on Ferraz street in Madrid is “the coordination center of the network” and from there “instructions are given, documents are prepared, sensitive communications are managed, and financial and corporate operations are articulated.” This is also the account defended by Martínez Martínez, who assures that Análisis Relevante was created for Zapatero to “issue reports on strategy, international relations” and other matters and “give conferences.” He states that, despite the former president not appearing in the shareholding, he was “the one who led and decided” the strategy and client acquisition.
Although the judge considers Zapatero the leader of the plot, the investigating judge does not subscribe to Martínez Martínez’s exculpatory thesis. According to Calama, the businessman participated in the collection of “significant amounts for non-existent advisory services.” “Martínez Martínez would play a relevant role at different levels: as a regular interlocutor for the network’s clients; as a recipient/executor of direct instructions from José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero; and as responsible for a corporate structure designed to channel funds received from said clients,” the magistrate warns.
Contact with Plus Ultra. The now former president of Plus Ultra assures that the only conversation he had with Zapatero about the airline’s rescue was by phone and lasted 10 minutes. They were put in contact by businessman Manuel Fajardo, considered the former socialist leader’s man in Venezuela, who told him that the former PSOE leader “could help him” and that he would contact him. “The next day, April 30, 2020, Mr. Martínez Sola received a call from a hidden number, which turned out to be Mr. José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero,” his statement details. The then president of Plus Ultra states that he told the politician “the difficult financial situation the company was in” and the latter’s response was that “his intervention could be helpful and that he would make the appropriate arrangements.” He also indicated that the contact person would be Martínez Martínez. “He did not mention fees, nor did he request anything in exchange for his efforts,” Martínez Sola’s statement reads. The former socialist leader denies that such a conversation existed. “It is untrue,” he stated before the judge.
However, the document presented by Martínez Martínez coincides with the airline’s former executive’s account, stating that “the first news” he had of Plus Ultra’s existence was in May of that year, when Zapatero informed him that he was going to receive a call from this company. “And, indeed, on May 16, 2020, Messrs. Martínez Sola and Roselli contacted him and told him about the company’s problems, of which former president Rodríguez Zapatero had already informed him.” Three months later, the contract between the airline and Análisis Relevante was signed, by which the latter received 5,000 euros monthly “for the advisory services that Zapatero had been providing since May.”
Efforts for the Plus Ultra rescue. The investigators’ account of Zapatero’s influence in the government’s approval of aid to Plus Ultra has also been reinforced by this week’s testimonies, which differ from the version the former president gave to the judge and reiterated in his first interview. The investigating judge asked him if he asked SEPI personnel to accelerate the process of granting aid to Plus Ultra, if he promised the airline to provide a contact person with whom they could discuss the processing of the file, or if he made any other “direct or indirect” efforts before SEPI. Zapatero answered all questions with the same formula: “Absolutely not.” “I have reaffirmed it here, neither before SEPI nor before any public employee nor before any member of the Government, before absolutely no one. I did not speak to anyone about the Plus Ultra rescue,” added the former socialist leader, who this week defended himself on television against this accusation with the same forcefulness.
But the judge considers that the rescue was one of the operations in which the plot “led” by Zapatero deployed its capacity for influence, and this has also been implied by the three defendants who have offered to collaborate with justice. Martínez Martínez warns that he had “no possibility of obtaining anything by himself, much less public or private financing.” “It was Mr. Rodríguez Zapatero who set the steps to follow,” the businessman maintained.
However, neither the judge nor the businessman nor the Plus Ultra executives have provided details of who the former president spoke with or which official or high-ranking public official agreed to grant the aid. Calama alluded in his interrogation to a meeting with the then minister José Luis Escrivá, but Zapatero and the former head of Social Security have denied that they spoke about the rescue. Martínez Sola also pointed to the former president, but admitted that they did not have “conclusive evidence of the specific actions carried out [by the former Prime Minister] to influence or favor the granting of the rescue to Plus Ultra by SEPI.” This is a relevant detail not yet clarified, although it may not be decisive. The Penal Code does not require that influence be effectively exercised for the crime of influence peddling to exist; it is sufficient that someone has offered to influence in exchange for “gifts, presents or any other remuneration” or has accepted that “offer or promise.”
Anticipated announcement. One of the investigators’ pieces of evidence against the former president is that the airline received news of its rescue days before it was approved. The UDEF found a message on the intercepted phones that Martínez Martínez sent to Rodolfo Reyes, a Plus Ultra shareholder, on February 26, 2021. “In recent days, to obtain the SEPI loan, it will most likely be at the Council of Ministers on March 9. My greatest congratulations for having achieved the objective.” The judge warns that, when this communication occurred, there were still four days left until the meeting of the Management Council of the Strategic Companies Solvency Support Fund (FASEE, dependent on SEPI and created to manage aid to companies affected by the crisis caused by the pandemic), which was the one that had to make the decision and elevate the proposal to the Government. The Executive approved it on the date anticipated by the former president’s friend. The summary also states that a week before the Government approved it, Roselli and Martínez Sola held a banquet with oysters and caviar and, when putting it in a group chat, Martínez Martínez jokingly commented that SEPI was not going to approve those expenses. “Don’t worry, that comes out of the 1%,” Roselli replied, referring to the commission the airline was going to pay Análisis Relevante for its efforts for the rescue.
Martínez Martínez and the Plus Ultra executives have corroborated this account. The former points to Zapatero as the original source of the information and assures that he merely transmitted it to several people at the airline, including Reyes. Martínez Sola and Roselli confirm the sequence and dates: “On February 26, 2021, Mr. Martínez Martínez reported that Plus Ultra had obtained the favorable proposal for the granting of SEPI aid and that the approval would foreseeably occur at the Council of Ministers on March 9.” Zapatero denies it. “Did you know any member of the management council of the Company Aid Fund?” the magistrate asked him. “No, I didn’t know anyone. Absolutely no one from the SEPII Council Fund,” he replied emphatically. This Thursday he reaffirmed it on TVE. “I didn’t know what the SEPI council was going to do. I didn’t intervene in anything, I didn’t know, and that’s the truth.”
The former president’s economic benefit. Zapatero assured Calama that he did “intense work” for Análisis Relevante for which he “logically” had “the right to receive” remuneration. This version does not agree with the UDEF’s and the judge’s hypothesis, which states that he was the “main ultimate beneficiary of the income obtained” by the plot. The judicial resolution states that Análisis Relevante transferred more than 490,000 euros from commissions to Zapatero’s accounts. The former president denies that this money was the result of an illegal payment. “In my life, I have never negotiated any commission whatsoever,” he told the magistrate.
Martínez Martínez —who does not use the term commission or kickback— assures that his company’s income from Plus Ultra was to pay for Zapatero’s help, but defends that they were justified by advisory work. For his part, the former president of Plus Ultra explains that Martínez Martínez told him that they had created a finance boutique [corporate structure] and he understood that supposedly “the kickback” of 1% would come from there. According to Martínez Sola and Roselli, it was then that both “became fully aware that Mr. Martínez Martínez and Mr. Zapatero did intend to charge for the efforts to be made, which was assumed by both as an unforeseen way to save the company, even if they were unaware of what internal agreements Martínez Martínez and Zapatero might have.” Plus Ultra transferred that 1% to Análisis Relevante and two other companies belonging to the former president’s friend, all of them part of “the corporate structures for financial opacity” of the plot, according to the indictment order against the former socialist leader.
The offshore company. The judge maintains that Zapatero and Martínez Martínez planned to create companies in Dubai to channel the collection of 1% of the rescue in an opaque manner, a fact that neither Zapatero’s intervention on TVE nor the businessman’s statement has shed light on. The former president assures that this suspicion is “an absolute invention or an error.” “I have never in my life heard of an offshore company,” the former leader assured the Audiencia Nacional, where he referred to Calama’s statement as “one of the things” that had most surprised him when reading the indictment order. “I have never in my life spoken to anyone about an offshore company and I don’t even know what it is.”
Martínez Martínez, for his part, assured the judge that the creation of a company in Dubai was only a project and was never constituted. And in the document sent to the Audiencia Nacional, the businessman omits that plan and only admits that a structure was created to defer Plus Ultra’s payments, but links it to the “media pressure” over the rescue and rejects that it was an illicit operation to hide the money.
The nature of the network. This is the aspect in which the investigators’ account differs most from that of the four defendants, including the three who have offered to cooperate with justice. None of them admit their participation in any illegal activity, so they deny that the contract they signed for the Plus Ultra rescue and the other efforts they worked on together are part of an “organized plot for the exercise of illicit influence peddling,” as Calama maintains. According to the judge, the contracts between both companies were “fictitious” or “ad hoc” to cover up crimes of influence peddling and money laundering.
Although, according to the judge, the former Prime Minister and Martínez Martínez were the ones who most directly profited from and managed this network, the investigating judge has also indicted the Plus Ultra executives for considering that they tried to obtain public rescue “through mechanisms outside the legally established channels, articulating differentiated lines of influence for this purpose,” one through former minister José Luis Ábalos and another through Zapatero. Martínez Sola and Roselli, however, although they acknowledge using the term “kickback” in WhatsApp conversations, state in their writings that they agreed to pay for Análisis Relevante’s help as an assumption of advisory costs, of “accompaniment,” necessary for the company’s viability, whose situation in the midst of the pandemic they describe as “desperate.” Martínez Martínez, for his part, has avoided defining exactly his company’s work, but assures that the former president was the one who channeled his contacts through Análisis Relevante and other companies, while he was only the transmitter of the directives set by the former socialist leader. Last Tuesday, the judge even described his actions as those of a “go-between.”
Jewels under suspicion. One of the judicial and political Achilles’ heels of Zapatero’s defense strategy are the jewels that the Economic and Fiscal Crime Unit (UDEF) of the National Police located in a safe during the search of his office. These are about 80 pieces, including necklaces, rings, bracelets, and diamond and precious stone rings —some in white gold with sapphires and emeralds— which, after an appraisal carried out between the Ansorena auction house and the Spanish Gemological Institute, have been valued at 1,323,915 euros. The Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office has asked the judge to request a new report to try to find out when the pieces were set and to delve into their current market price.
Everything about them —to which neither Martínez Martínez nor the two Plus Ultra executives allude in their writings— remains a mystery, largely due to the former president’s refusal so far to clarify their origin. When Calama —who called them “the damned jewels” in his interrogation of Zapatero— asked him about them, the former president said he did not want to testify at that moment and that he would give explanations later. “A week, 10 days at most,” he assured the magistrate, who has opened a separate investigation into the jewels, investigating the former socialist leader for the alleged commission of a crime of smuggling and another fiscal offense. After that time, those explanations have not materialized. On TVE, the former president again avoided clarifying their origin and merely questioned the experts’ valuation and assured that they were “a personal courtesy gift from many years ago.” “There has been no use or desire for patrimonial gain,” the former president excused himself. The date on which he received them is key to determining whether he can be accused of any crime. When the existence of the pieces and their millionaire value became known, Zapatero’s entourage indicated that the gift dates back to 2007 —and, therefore, any possible crimes would have prescribed— and pointed to a gift from the Saudi Arabian authorities as their origin.
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