Judge José Luis Calama, instructor of the Plus Ultra case in the National Court, maintains an open independent line of investigation into the relationship between a Venezuelan broker named Danilo Diazgranados and Julio Martínez Martínez, owner of the consulting firm Análisis Relevante and friend and alleged front man of former president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, who was charged this May in the main part of the investigations. This is evident from the documentation incorporated into the case file and confirmed by various sources involved in the case, who emphasize that the content of these investigations remains confidential. The Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office has reported the existence of a WhatsApp chat called “Danilo España,” which includes “incriminating data” pointing to an “exercise of influence” in favor of the Venezuelan. Furthermore, according to the public prosecutor, the Economic and Fiscal Crime Unit (UDEF) of the National Police indicates an alleged mediation by Zapatero with Repsol so that Diazgranados could successfully complete a lubricant distribution operation in 2023. The oil company has denied this.
On the same day Calama signed the order charging Zapatero (last May 18), he also signed another document to open two separate parts of the main investigation in which he included three reports prepared by the UDEF that have not been made public and which, according to Anti-Corruption, concern the content found in the “Danilo España” chat. In a document, the Prosecutor’s Office specifies that this conversation contains numerous messages exchanged between Diazgranados — one of chavismo’s favorite financial operators, according to a journalistic investigation carried out by Armando.Info following the leak of Swiss documentation — and the Spanish lawyer Miguel Palomero between April 30, 2019, and October 24, 2024.
As reported by EL PAÍS, there is another branch of the Plus Ultra case promoted by the magistrate to request information from the United States about some of the accused.
The new evidence about Diazgranados, who is linked to Julio Martínez Martínez, was found in Palomero’s possession. Specifically, on a computer located in his office during a search carried out on October 24, 2024, in execution of a cooperation order with French authorities. The UDEF has already pointed to this lawyer, who also maintained a relationship with the Plus Ultra leadership, for allegedly trying to sabotage the case opened in 2021 in a Madrid court regarding the 53 million euro bailout granted by the Government to the airline.
The case file reflects that “Danilo España” was the name Palomero saved on his phone for one of the Venezuelan’s numbers. Prosecutor Elena Lorente defines the lawyer as Diazgranados’ “factotum”: “An employee at his service.” In fact, the public prosecutor explains that the messages show, for example, another attempt to “paralyze” a “criminal process for documentary falsification” opened against the businessman’s son following his arrest in May 2019 at the border control of a Madrid-Miami flight. According to Anti-Corruption, the alleged scheme carried out “arrangements” to “influence” “authorities at very high levels of the administrative and judicial spheres.” Additionally, investigators suspect they tried to “erase,” through “the authorities of the United States Embassy,” any negative information that might exist about the broker’s offspring that could “prevent him from traveling again to that country.”
Investigators therefore believe that Palomero was an intermediary for Diazgranados. The Prosecutor’s Office maintains that the Venezuelan, through the lawyer, had “very frequent contacts with several people.” Among them, Julio Martínez Martínez is mentioned, who was arrested on December 11, 2025, within the framework of the Plus Ultra case and who, in turn, is described as another “fixer” (in addition to being Zapatero’s front man). Anti-Corruption bases its thesis on UDEF reports, which have identified repeated references to “Julio” in that WhatsApp chat, whom they identify as the owner of Análisis Relevante.
From those messages, the prosecutor also infers that “gifts are frequent, particularly high-end wine bottles, which Danilo entrusts Palomero to manage and which are sent to people with positions of power of various kinds who may have provided some kind of favor or service to Mr. Diazgranados.” “Danilo recurrently pampers, among others, Rodríguez Zapatero and Julio Martínez Martínez,” the public prosecutor highlights in another document.
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But these are not the only suspicions arising from that intercepted chat. The judge is also investigating a high-ranking police officer, Jesús María Gómez Martín, current chief of the National Police in the Canary Islands, for his “close relationship” with Diazgranados. The UDEF considers there is evidence that he received gifts from the Venezuelan in exchange for favors when he was the top police official at Adolfo Suárez-Barajas airport in Madrid. Gómez Martín was in command at the airport on January 20, 2020, when the meeting took place there between then Minister of Transport José Luis Ábalos and Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez, who was banned from entering European territory due to sanctions against Nicolás Maduro’s regime.
The relationship with Zapatero
Investigators extend their suspicions to former president Zapatero by scrutinizing the relationship between Diazgranados, Palomero, and Martínez (the latter is again identified as a “trusted man and front person” of the socialist). The Prosecutor’s Office details that UDEF reports on the “Danilo España” chat provide evidence that the Venezuelan businessman “would have taken” the former head of government on “a private plane” and “would have hosted him in meetings that may have taken place at Danilo’s own residence in La Romana (Dominican Republic).”
Furthermore, according to a prosecutor’s document, payments from the broker to the company Agropecuaria Lucena — owned by Martínez Martínez and whose corporate purpose is the “cultivation of oilseeds” — are “recorded,” as well as a payment of 20,000 euros on April 24, 2020, to the account of What The Fav, a company owned by Zapatero’s daughters. This marketing company was registered by agents last Tuesday, May 19. According to the public prosecutor, “all” these money movements coincide with “the obtaining of favors for Danilo’s interests in Spain,” as inferred from one of the UDEF reports incorporated into this line of investigation and which has not been made public.
In a document, Anti-Corruption briefly emphasized that this police report also “accounts for the alleged exercise of influence by Zapatero before senior executives of Repsol so that Danilo Diazgranados obtained in December 2023 the distribution of lubricants of that company in Venezuela, which could constitute a crime of corruption in business.” Sources from the company categorically denied to this newspaper “any commercial or other type of relationship with Danilo Diazgranados Manglano” and assured that they operate “under strict principles of transparency, integrity, and respect for legality in all countries where they are present.”
Sources involved in the investigation insist that this entire part of the inquiries is still in a “very early” phase, although they are looking for evidence of influence peddling, bribery, and corruption in business. Investigators analyze requests for favors to public officials or “relevant persons” and the payments this broker may have made in return. Among the messages in the “Danilo España” chat, references were found to a person nicknamed “Zorro,” “Z,” or “ZZZZZ,” with whom Diazgranados supposedly has a very close personal and economic relationship, and whom the UDEF has identified as former president Zapatero.
