“We will adjust the invoice”; “we can agree on the concepts”; “[tell me] ok or if I have to put a higher amount”… The Plus Ultra case, in which alleged irregularities in the granting of a public aid of 53 million euros to the airline are being investigated, points to the fact that the alleged people involved in the scheme regularly used false invoices to “provide documentary appearance and formal coverage to certain payments” that are difficult to justify legally, according to the order issued by the judge of the National Court José Luis Calama to charge the former Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero as the alleged ringleader of an influence peddling scheme. In his ruling, the magistrate includes several examples in which, according to the investigators of the operation called Tibet Operation, “an invoicing operation disconnected from economic reality is revealed, as it is only aimed at generating documentary support.”
One of these examples links directly to Zapatero himself. According to emails seized from businessman Julio Martínez Martínez, a personal friend of the former PSOE leader and owner of the company Análisis Relevante, considered the epicenter of the scheme, both delegated to trusted people the maneuvers to provide “formal and documentary coverage to their illicit activity.” The former Prime Minister, through his two secretaries, María Gertrudis Alcázar — identified by investigators as an “essential operative piece” of the alleged scheme — and Judith Laure Wells, who worked in the office at number 35 Ferraz Street. And the businessman did so through Cristóbal Cano, who performed administrative director functions in his complex corporate structure.
The order details that, in a seized email, Alcázar asked Cano about issuing an invoice for an amount of 20,000 euros, and raised the possibility of issuing one or several, while requesting instructions on the concepts that should be included in them. “Such an extent — notes Judge Calama — clearly evidences a prior agreement on the content, concepts, and amount of the invoices to be issued.” The response from Martínez Martínez’s right-hand man is to provide Zapatero’s secretary with the concepts to include in those commercial documents, as well as their temporal allocation and amounts. “A month later, the operational pattern repeats,” the order highlights, which includes a phrase from these messages considered relevant: “We can agree on the concepts [of the invoices].”
The magistrate concludes that this way of operating is allegedly irregular, since “the supposed service provider [Zapatero, through his secretary] does not merely issue the invoice, but asks the recipient if the invoices are ‘ok or if I have to put a higher amount. Whatever you tell me on Monday, I will send you the signed one.” “In this operation, the issuance of invoices does not appear directly linked to the provision of services, but rather articulated afterwards and through the coordination of the parties involved,” adds the judge in the order.
The investigation also detects alleged illegalities in the exchange of invoices between different companies of the businessman friend of the former prime minister, which, according to the judge’s inference, is “intended to provide formal coverage to certain financial or commercial movements, which otherwise would be difficult to justify, thus supporting a channeling of funds for a specific purpose.” Specifically, it refers to the company Caletón Consultores SL, which received 1.16 million euros between 2020 and 2025 from Plus Ultra, and which allegedly appear backed by invoices with the concept of “commissions for charter operations” and various transfer receipts found on devices seized from some of the investigated in the first phase of the operation, carried out in December.
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However, the judge focuses on several money outflows from Caletón Consultores to two other companies controlled by Martínez Martínez himself, which he considers were made “without accredited economic justification (Iot Domotic Europe) or under a contractual coverage whose management presents atypical elements (Voli Analítica), which is relevant for the analysis of the purpose and regularity of the described operation.” In this regard, the ruling reproduces several messages exchanged by several investigated persons. In one of them, an economic transaction is proposed through the creation of a “tailored” contract in which the interlocutors say: “We will adjust the invoice.” “All this — the judge emphasizes — shows that its purpose is to provide documentary appearance and formal coverage to certain payments.”
In another seized message, in this case to Julio Martínez Sola, president of Plus Ultra, the investigators also see alleged irregularities in invoicing. In this case, the investigated explains to a woman, who turns out to be the wife of Rodolfo Reyes, former owner of the airline, how she should invoice a third person. “The one from June [20]23, what date should I put on the invoices? [Should] both invoices be dated May 2024?” the woman asks. “This allows inferring that invoices would have been prepared by adapting dates and concepts, with the purpose of providing documentary support and formal coverage to the payments and facilitating the channeling of funds,” highlights the judicial author.
The leaders of Operation Tibet also consider they have found indications of alleged irregularities in the commercial relations between Grupo Aldesa, of Chinese origin, and one of Martínez Martínez’s companies. Specifically, Idella Consulenza Strategica. The judge’s order details that a contract from October 2021 was found, under which the first company was to pay a percentage of the amount of the awards that the friend of Zapatero’s company obtained for it and which, ultimately, did not materialize. Despite this, the judge draws attention to the fact that, while the draft agreement was being prepared, the businessman requested to remove the word “commission” from the document.
“The express instruction to remove the word ‘commission,’ together with the joint analysis of the seized documentation, allows inferring that this type of operation would be articulated through alternative denominations linked to supposed advisory services, with the purpose of disguising the true economic nature of the operations. This pattern reproduces that observed in other companies and reinforces the existence of a strategy aimed at hiding or disguising payments of different nature,” the judge notes.
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