Entrepreneurs Julio Martínez Martínez, administrator of Análisis Relevante, and Julio Martínez Sola and Roberto Roselli, president and current CEO of the airline Plus Ultra, began this Monday to follow the vía Aldama, the path that led the main commission agent of the Koldo case to benefit from a substantial sentence reduction after self-incriminating and detailing his dealings with former minister José Luis Ábalos and advisor Koldo García to benefit from rigged public contracts. Martínez Martínez, Martínez Sola, and Roselli have submitted to the National Court respective documents in which they agree to cooperate in the investigation opened for possible irregularities in the 53 million euro bailout that the Government granted to the airline during the covid-19 pandemic and directly point to former Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, charged in this case.
The entrepreneurs agree in explaining in their writings that the socialist former president was actively involved in granting that aid and was paid for it, a statement that contradicts what Zapatero himself declared during his appearance before Judge José Luis Calama last June 17. The three documents presented to the National Court differ in several key points from the explanations given by the former Prime Minister:
The beginnings of Análisis Relevante. Zapatero distanced himself from the creation of Análisis Relevante, from which, according to the file, he earned almost half a million euros, and assured that he started working with this consultancy in 2020 through “a verbal contract,” but that he always acted as an external consultant. According to the former president, part of his work focused on making generic reports that served different companies and were sent to people they considered “could be of interest, as potential clients.” Martínez, however, states in his document that the former president was involved in the company’s establishment from the beginning, at the end of 2019. According to the entrepreneur, it was two mutual friends with Zapatero, Javier de Paz and Sergio Sánchez, who proposed the idea of creating a “strategic consultancy” that would have as an attraction “having a former Prime Minister as a consultant and main reference.”
Martínez Martínez assures that Zapatero was “the main consultant” of Análisis Relevante and that the company was created so that he “would issue reports on strategy, international relations” and other matters and “give lectures as clients required.” The entrepreneur states that it was agreed that the partners of the company would be Julio Martínez Martínez (with 75% of the shares) and Sergio Sánchez (with the remaining 25%) and that Zapatero was left out of the shareholding and formal bodies, although “he was the one who led and decided” the strategy and client acquisition.
Arrangements for Plus Ultra. Zapatero placed himself “absolutely” outside the 53 million euro bailout that the Government gave to the airline. “I have exerted absolutely no influence on the Plus Ultra bailout,” the former leader stated before Judge Calama asked him any questions. During the interrogation, after the instructor reminded him that the airline executives called him “pana [friend] Zapatero,” the former president defended himself: “I cannot be responsible for what third parties say. Some of those who speak there are people I do not know.”
Zapatero only admitted to having made an arrangement with Banco Santander, which he downplayed. “Perhaps the first time [I heard something about Plus Ultra] was when they asked me for an arrangement so they would be attended to by Santander, as appears there [referring to the file],” Zapatero explained after almost an hour and fifteen minutes of testimony, according to the audios accessed by EL PAÍS. “I just called Mr. [Juan Manuel] Cendoya [vice president of the entity] to attend to them, and I also believe they worked with them,” insisted the former PSOE leader, who distanced himself from the letter that the vice president of Plus Ultra ended up sending to the bank to try to access an ICO loan and in which he claimed to write “following instructions from President Zapatero.”
The version of Martínez Martínez and the Plus Ultra officials about Zapatero’s role in the bailout is very different from that of the former president. According to Martínez Martínez, it was the former leader who put Plus Ultra executives in contact with Análisis Relevante in May 2020 and who “marked the steps to follow” in the arrangements that led to the airline’s bailout. At first, he suggested seeking an ICO loan through Banco Santander and even asked that a letter be sent in his name to the entity’s vice president. Martínez Martínez assures that when this route failed and the arrangements were redirected to the State Industrial Holdings Company (SEPI) — the public body responsible for managing the aid — Zapatero was “punctually informed” of all the steps taken and his role was decisive until the end.
The president of Plus Ultra, Julio Martínez Sola, also implicates Zapatero in the company’s bailout. This entrepreneur states that when the company was financially suffocated, “it was assumed that Plus Ultra should contract with Mr. Martínez Martínez […] aware that he had the relationship with Mr. Rodríguez Zapatero, also assuming the payment of large sums of money (1%) for such tasks that, euphemistically, they called ‘accompaniment.’” Martínez Sola explains that it was another Venezuelan businessman who told him that Zapatero could help him and, on April 30, 2020, the former president called him and said that his intervention “could be helpful and that he would make the appropriate arrangements.” Also, from that moment, the “communications” would be with a person he described as “trusted” and who was Martínez Martínez. Martínez Sola admits, however, that neither he nor the then financial director, Roberto Roselli, also charged, had “conclusive evidence of the specific actions carried out [by the former Prime Minister] to influence or favor the granting of the bailout to Plus Ultra by SEPI.”
Payments for the bailout. Zapatero admitted before the judge to having earned almost 500,000 euros from his work for Análisis Relevante but assured that he did not receive a single euro for the Plus Ultra bailout and that he collected his consultancy work at the end of the year. When the judge pointed out his “suspicion” that the work he did for his friend Julio Martínez was not consultancy but “a cover” to receive a commission for his intervention in the airline’s bailout, the former president was vehement. “I reaffirm emphatically: I had no intervention. I did not speak with anyone, absolutely no one from the public sector about the Plus Ultra bailout. That is an unquestionable truth. No one will be able to say otherwise,” Zapatero maintained.
Martínez Martínez, however, states in his document that Plus Ultra signed a contract for 5,000 euros per month with Análisis Relevante and links these payments directly to the work and influence of the former socialist president. “The fees to be collected were for the advice that Zapatero had been giving since May,” the entrepreneur assures. Martínez Martínez also details a second contract linked to the success in obtaining the bailout that stipulated payment by the airline of a 1% commission on the financing obtained (about 530,000 euros) plus VAT as “consideration for the services provided and the success of the operation” before SEPI.
The two Plus Ultra executives, for their part, detail to the judge that the contract was signed but was not executed as such, but that the airline “paid said 1% through several payments to the three companies Análisis Relevante SL, Voli Analítica, and Iot Domotic Europe SL — linked to Martínez Martínez — which together with other payments in kind recognized as made for the numerous business class flights he requested and did not pay for (up to a total of 46), amount to the total sum of 530,000 euros.” “That is, 1% of the 53 million bailout, as they had agreed,” Martínez Sola states in his document.