The Economic and Fiscal Crime Unit (UDEF) of the National Police states in a report that former Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero met in person with the president of Plus Ultra, Julio Martínez Sola, during the processing by the State Industrial Holdings Company (SEPI) of the 53 million euro public aid that the company ultimately received. The police document, incorporated into the case being investigated by the National Court judge José Luis Calama and accessed by EL PAÍS, details that this alleged in-person meeting took place on October 14, 2020, less than a month before Plus Ultra made a first payment, linked to a consulting contract signed months earlier, of 6,050 euros to Análisis Relevante, Julio Martínez Martínez’s company, a friend of the former PSOE leader and considered a key figure in the alleged influence trafficking scheme.
The police conclusion is based on an exchange of messages between this airline executive and Venezuelan businessman Rodolfo Reyes, the company’s main shareholder, in which the former states that at that moment he is “with the Zapateros and the Chinese.” Reyes replied minutes later with a “good luck.” These messages were found on the mobile phone of the latter, Venezuelan businessman Rodolfo Reyes, seized by US authorities, who forwarded them to the National Court. These communications have become one of the key pieces of the investigation, according to the UDEF report, which makes continuous references to the content of that device and the collaboration of the United States Department of Homeland Security (HSI).
In its report, the National Police highlights that, days after that alleged meeting, on October 19, SEPI sent Plus Ultra “an additional request for rectification and clarifications with the intention of improving the initial application” that the airline had made to request the million-euro aid, which triggered a new exchange of messages between Reyes and Martínez Sola. In one of those messages, Reyes informs the company president that on that same day, at 12:30, he was going to have a meeting with SEPI after receiving a first communication from them by email. They later spoke about a business with “the Chinese,” which investigators identify due to the “temporal proximity” to the meeting in which “the Zapatero” supposedly participated earlier. This conversation has also been provided by Washington authorities.
The report highlights the existence of another message exchange, this time in a chat called “Sala Situacional Pula,” in which four Plus Ultra executives participate. One of them, Roberto Roselli, the company’s CEO and also charged, informs the other three that on that day, October 21, 2020, he “coincidentally” met Martínez Martínez, Zapatero’s friend, who demanded “that he pay the bill with a rub.” The message is accompanied by an image showing around the table of an unidentified hospitality establishment, Roselli himself, Martínez Sola, and Martínez Martínez along with two other unidentified people. The next day, in the same chat, Roselli adds: “Yesterday collecting the contact.”
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Five days later, on October 26, Plus Ultra responded to SEPI’s request to rectify the documentation submitted to obtain the public million-euro aid. The Police detail that on November 5, the airline made the first payment to Análisis Relevante justified by the contract dated late July — although signed on August 8 of that year by Martínez Sola and Martínez Martínez — that both companies had closed for the latter to provide supposed “consulting services.”
The Police highlight that one day before that first payment, Plus Ultra’s CEO sent an audio file to the company’s main shareholder “in which he reveals a meeting in which he says he had just been talking ‘with the SEPI guy,’” in which he and the president, Martínez Sola, supposedly participated. And he adds that “on the other line was also the contact, clandestinely,” without clarifying to whom he refers, although he adds that, according to this person’s view, “it seemed quite positive” and that “right now they will be on top of our case.”
