The National Court judge José Luis Calama has requested from the Subdirectorate General of State Heritage the acceptance records of institutional gifts received by the Presidency of the Government during the two terms of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. The magistrate has set a maximum period of two days to submit the documentation, as reported by the 'EFE' news agency.
The request is part of the investigation into the jewelry valued at more than 1.3 million euros that was seized from a safe in the former president's office during the search on May 19, within the Plus Ultra case.
Calama requests these documents before ruling on the requests from Zapatero's defense and the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office, which has proposed investigating a possible embezzlement for not having handed over the pieces to State Heritage.
The records of gifts received between 2004 and 2011
In his order, the magistrate demands that the documentation arrive "as soon as possible" and, in any case, within the two days granted.
Specifically, he asks for a copy of the record, dated March 1, 2012, related to the incorporation into the heritage of the General State Administration and the assignment to the Ministry of the Presidency of the institutional gifts corresponding to the 2004-2008 and 2008-2011 legislatures.
The proceeding comes after the judge received the Anti-Corruption report on Zapatero's request to resort to judicial cooperation with Saudi Arabia to prove the origin of the jewels.
Zapatero attributes three sets of jewels to a gift from the Saudi king
The former president submitted a document in September stating that three sets of jewels out of the sixty pieces seized came from a gift from the then Saudi king, Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud, now deceased.
According to his explanation, the monarch handed them over at the Moncloa Palace in June 2007, during his official visit to Spain on the 18th and 19th of that month. Zapatero maintained that he accepted the gift out of "deference" and asked the judge to request collaboration from the Saudi authorities to corroborate it.
Anti-Corruption questions why he kept the pieces after leaving the Presidency
Prosecutor María Elena Lorente believes that the former president's explanation could open a new line of investigation into the fate he gave to these gifts.
"The investigated José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero comes to acknowledge that, as President of the Government, he accepted jewels of very significant value and that he did not hand them over to State Heritage, as he did with other gifts at the end of his Presidency," states the report cited by EFE.
Anti-corruption maintains that, "if his version is true", the origin of the pieces could imply a crime of embezzlement of public funds which, in its opinion, would not have prescribed.
The judge has requested the Heritage records before ruling on these requests. Therefore, the documentary request does not mean that he has already assumed the Prosecutor's Office's thesis on this possible embezzlement.
