Venezuelan<\/a> oil transactions; that foreign buyers interested in Venezuelan crude had to submit their letters of intent directly to Zapatero.<\/p>\nThe judge\u2019s indictment adds that a corruption scandal at this scale, with the ex-prime minister at the center, could only have occurred with a high degree of political impunity in Spain.<\/p>\n
Twists and turns of court documents widely discussed in Spain<\/p>\n
Information about court documents, with new twists and turns, is published across the Spanish media daily and discussed ad nauseam in the bars and caf\u00e9s.<\/p>\n
The funds provided for the bailout of the Plus Ultra airline were allegedly used to channel millions of euros to foreign corporate networks involved in Venezuelan gold and oil trades. Following the indictment, the judge froze approximately \u20ac490,000 in Zapatero-linked accounts, as well as the accounts of his daughters\u2019 marketing company, What the Fav.<\/p>\n
UDEF, a Spanish National Police unit for the investigation of money laundering and large-scale corruption, has conducted raids, including four simultaneous ones last month, targeting Zapatero\u2019s and others\u2019 offices or business premises, following an initial raid on the Plus Ultra airline headquarters at Adolfo Su\u00e1rez Madrid-Barajas Airport.<\/p>\n
Calama alleges that Zapatero and people in his circle received \u20ac1.95m. ($2.11m.) in improper payments from the Plus Ultra bailout case.<\/p>\n
The judge has issued international arrest warrants for Plus Ultra primary shareholders Venezuelan Rodolfo Reyes and Mar\u00eda Aurora L\u00f3pez, for alleged membership in a criminal organization, embezzlement, and money laundering, Democrata media reported on May 25.<\/p>\n
In a May 19 report, El Pa\u00eds explained: \u201cThe Attorney-General\u2019s Office, led by Alejandro Luz\u00f3n, has been looking since 2024 into the whereabouts of the bailout funds [for Plus Ultra] granted in March 2021, after receiving two information requests from authorities in Switzerland and France regarding alleged money laundering activities in those countries.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a May 28, 12-hour search and data clone raid on the Spanish Socialist Workers\u2019 Party\u2019s (PSOE) iconic Madrid headquarters on Ferraz Street, the Civil Guard\u2019s elite crime investigation unit and anti-corruption division (UCO), operating under judicial orders, turned up an alleged network used to discredit judicial cases.<\/p>\n
According to media reports, UCO uncovered extensive incriminating material, including high-end luxury jewels currently valued in the press at \u20ac1m., in Zapatero\u2019s domains. The former prime minister claims the jewels are a family inheritance of his wife.<\/p>\n
Zapatero, in his role as diplomatic mediator in Venezuela, got S\u00e1nchez to agree to bail out the minuscule Venezuelan Plus Ultra airline during the COVID-19 pandemic, for \u20ac53m., a sum far beyond the worth of the airline. Judge Calama says a Dubai-based shell company was created to assist with covering the airline bailout\u2019s money trail.<\/p>\n
An immediate result of that bailout was a visit to Spain by then-Venezuelan-president Nicol\u00e1s Maduro\u2019s number two, vice president Delcy Rodriguez, who arrived on the tarmac at Barajas with many heavy suitcases and facing no controls. What those suitcases were filled with remains to be seen.<\/p>\n
Part of the money Zapatero earned from his dealings with the Venezuelan regime may have been laundered through his two daughters\u2019 marketing agency, coming from a consulting firm called Analisis Relevante. Currently, they have not been indicted. Speculation in the media is that if they are, Zapatero is likely to make a deal to spare them. That would bring the hot seat closer to S\u00e1nchez.<\/p>\n
Sanchez’s corrupt associates become household names<\/p>\n
IN TERMS of the ongoing corruption cases of those who have been closest to S\u00e1nchez, \u201cAbalos,\u201d \u201cKoldo,\u201d and \u201cAldama\u201d have become household names across Spain in the past few years.<\/p>\n
Jos\u00e9 Luis Abalos, once S\u00e1nchez\u2019s influential transport and development minister and former member of the Congress of Deputies, is in jail, awaiting sentencing this week, after three years.<\/p>\n
It is expected that Abalos, from whom S\u00e1nchez has distanced himself, will receive a longish sentence, as will his aide, Koldo Garc\u00eda, for their involvement in the famous \u201cCaso Koldo,\u201d an alleged scheme for the provision of cheaper and subpar COVID masks to the health services, playing with people\u2019s lives during the pandemic.<\/p>\n
V\u00edctor de Aldama is accused of facilitating the mask business. He has cooperated with information-sharing with the judiciary since the case began. Aria media noted that \u201cin the last two [court] sessions, it has become clear that Aldama had the ability to move around the Ministry of Transport headquarters, in the Nuevos Ministerios complex, as if he were one of them.\u201d<\/p>\n
The case has become a major political liability for S\u00e1nchez. The fate of Aldama appears to be where Zapatero\u2019s (and therefore also the prime minister\u2019s) future hangs most in the balance.<\/p>\n
If Aldama manages to avoid jail time altogether, a politcal analyst close to The Jerusalem Post said, it is possible that Julio \u201cJulito\u201d Martinez, Zapatero\u2019s best friend, who is also under investigation, might also decide to cooperate with the judiciary.<\/p>\n
Analisis Relevante, the corporate network that made payments to Zapatero\u2019s daughters, is managed by Martinez. It is now alleged to have been created for the sole purpose of money-laundering kickbacks from Plus Ultra. In 2020, as Plus Ultra lobbied Zapatero for a Spanish government bailout, his daughters received an initial transfer of \u20ac25,400 from Analisis Relevante.<\/p>\n
On May 19, in a raid on the offices of Zapatero, UDEF discovered a hidden safe containing over 100 luxury items, watches, and pieces of jewelry, as well as Martinez\u2019s handwritten notes detailing transactions with Venezuela.<\/p>\n
Previously, when UDEF officers, on December 11 last year, raided Martinez\u2019s home, they discovered \u20ac286,000 in cash hidden in cardboard boxes, radiators, and golf bags.<\/p>\n
A MASSIVE cover-up operation is alleged to have been set in motion on the day that S\u00e1nchez\u2019s wife, Bego\u00f1a G\u00f3mez, was formally charged with corruption, influence peddling, and embezzlement after a two-year investigation in a ruling dated April 11, published two days later.<\/p>\n
At that point, the prime minister announced to the country that he was taking a pause for four days of reflection to decide whether or not to resign. He is alleged to have immediately called a meeting with his right-hand man, Santos Cerdan, then-PSOE organizational secretary (who resigned last year after a judge found \u201cfirm evidence\u201d of his taking kickbacks on public construction contracts), and is alleged to have given the order to interfere with any processes against him. Cerdan was a busy man, so a woman called Leire Diez was the \u201coperational person of Santos Cerdan,\u201d the political analyst explained.<\/p>\n
When agents from the Central Operational Unit (UCO) of the Civil Guard raided the home of Diez in December, in a sealed National Court investigation into an alleged judicial obstruction plot, they found copious evidence against her for allegedly orchestrating an operation to obstruct justice and derail corruption cases involving the PSOE or the government. They seized electronic devices, notebooks, and diaries. She was arrested and later released on bail<\/p>\n
During the Ferraz headquarters raid last month, the UCO acquired information linking Diez\u2019s activities and travel expenses directly to the party leadership.<\/p>\n
Information was also found on the activities of SEPI (the State Industrial Holdings Company), Correos (state postal service), Tragsa (a state-owned company), and EFE, the state news agency.<\/p>\n
Diez\u2019s notes and recordings span several years of plans, calls, meetings, ideas, negotiations, and notes on suspected corruption within public entities she worked for, or those she learned about from former SEPI president Vicente Fern\u00e1ndez, with whom she maintained a romantic relationship. He also charged in this case.<\/p>\n
Information stored by Diez indicates a direct attempt to tamper with evidence by then-transport minister Abalos, at the time, S\u00e1nchez\u2019s number two in both the government and the socialist party.<\/p>\n
UCO collects proof of attempts to shut investigation down<\/p>\n
According to media reports, the UCO has collected proof of attempts at varying bureaucratic levels and even inside the Civil Guard to shut down the UCO\u2019s investigation.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, Democrata media published that the State Attorney-General\u2019s Office had ratified before National High Court Judge Santiago Pedraz, who is investigating the Diez case, the existence of two meetings between Diez, Cerdan\u2019s lawyer, and a former high-ranking official linked to then-attorney-general \u00c1lvaro Garc\u00eda Ortiz, who resigned as attorney-general in 2025, found guilty by the Supreme Court of revealing secrets in a mudslinging attack on Madrid President Isabel D\u00edaz Ayuso, a sharp critic of S\u00e1nchez.<\/p>\n
Diez is yet another person whom S\u00e1nchez denies knowing, in his classic: \u201cI don\u2019t know\u201d; \u201cI haven\u2019t heard\u201d; \u201cI am not aware\u201d meme-spawning response.<\/p>\n
\u201cDiez is the Holy Grail,\u201d the analyst told the Post. \u201cFrom her, many strings will unravel.\u201d<\/p>\n
AT A time when he could be nearing the end of his career, S\u00e1nchez chose to redirect public attention by praising the son of the arch-terrorist Marwan Barghouti, Arab Barghouti, who spoke at the Primavera Sound music festival in Barcelona on June 6, addressing the massive crowd even before the first act, at what has become a major hub for pro-Palestinian activism. Barghouti thanked the residents of Barcelona for supporting the Palestinian cause.<\/p>\n
S\u00e1nchez greeted him after his speech, praising his \u201cresistance.\u201d The Spanish prime minister later posted a video of Barghouti\u2019s speech on his official Instagram account, with \u201cThank you for raising your voice.\u201d<\/p>\n
That morning, S\u00e1nchez had met with Pope Leo XIV to welcome him to Spain, upon the premier\u2019s own recent return from visiting the pope in Rome. The prime minister was criticized by the media and the public for not attending more events with the pope and instead using the government Falcon plane to attend Primavera Sound with his wife.<\/p>\n
The pope\u2019s visit, an enormously popular event in Spain, bringing people from all over the country to Madrid, was strategically planned by S\u00e1nchez in one of his masterful smokescreens to direct public attention away from the trials, the analyst noted.<\/p>\n
S\u00e1nchez is \u201cjust an empty suit,\u201d he told the Post, \u201cHe is the ideal head of state for the new world order in Europe: anti-America and anti-Israel, able to jump on the bandwagon and address the son of a terrorist at a music festival in Barcelona, the area of Spain with the highest antisemitism.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The analyst described the head and poster boy of the Socialist International as \u201cgood-looking, plays the part of just the right sort of Western leader to position against Trump and Israel, but he is an empty suit.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to testimony given to the investigating judge by businessman Aldama, an oil transaction involving six million barrels of Venezuelan crude, valued at approximately \u20ac250m., was allegedly orchestrated by Zapatero to funnel kickbacks to the PSOE and the International Socialist. This appears to be how \u201cgodfather\u201d Zapatero bought S\u00e1nchez his seat as head of the International Socialist.<\/p>\n
If the forthcoming testimony manages to tie S\u00e1nchez in with any of these threads, Spain\u2019s current prime minister will likely be facing jail time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On June 17, former Spanish prime minister Jos\u00e9 Luis Rodriguez Zapatero (in office 2004 to 2011) will make…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":39622,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2883,4380,131,205,17,564],"class_list":["post-39621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-spain","tag-corruption","tag-nicolas-maduro","tag-oil","tag-pedro-sanchez","tag-spain","tag-venezuela"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39621"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39621\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Supporters](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/725375.jpeg\"\/)
Supporters of Venezuelan opposition presidential candidate Edmundo Gonzalez hold signs against Spain’s former Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero that read ”Zapatero, Maduro\u2019s handler”, outside the venue where Zapatero attends a book presentation in Madrid, Spain, September 24, 2024. (credit: REUTERS\/Susana Vera)<\/p>\n