The former CEO of Plus Ultra, Roberto Roselli, ratified this Tuesday before the judge of the National Court, José Luis Calama, that the airline allocated 1% of the 53 million euros received during the pandemic to pay for alleged efforts by former Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. The agreed amount totaled 530,000 euros.
Roselli, under investigation in the 'Plus Ultra case', maintained during an almost three-hour interrogation the version he had already submitted in writing to the court in July. According to his account, the money was given to companies linked to businessman Julio Martínez Martínez, a partner and close associate of Zapatero, because the company's management took for granted that the former socialist leader was behind those efforts.
The former executive admitted, however, that he never spoke personally with Zapatero and does not know what specific actions the former president might have taken before the Government or the State Society of Industrial Participations (SEPI). Nor is he aware of any contacts with officials or public servants to favor the granting of the rescue.
His statement is based, therefore, on the interpretation made at the time by Plus Ultra's leadership. Roselli explained that the company considered that amount a commission conditioned on the success of the operation and that it assumed the payment in the midst of a search for liquidity. The airline's executives internally used the expression "Zapatero group" to refer to the circle they attributed to the former president.
"Irrelevant" reports to justify 530,000 euros
One of the most compromising parts of the statement concerns the work used to support the payments. Roselli assured that the reports prepared by Martínez Martínez's companies were "irrelevant", that on many occasions no one read them, and that they served to justify amounts actually intended to obtain public aid.
The former heads of Plus Ultra already acknowledged in their written statement that they issued about 40 invoices, with amounts ranging between 6,050 and 7,250 euros, under the concept "Monthly fees. Report preparation." The documentation delivered to the company would have been scarce and useless for its activity, according to the version now defended before the instructor.
The payment was distributed among different companies linked to Martínez Martínez. Plus Ultra paid 249,000 euros to Análisis Relevante, 98,617 euros to Voli Analítica, and 110,799 euros to Domotic Europe. It also accounted for another 69,000 euros corresponding to 'business' class tickets provided since 2021. The company intended to finish regularizing the accounts when the police operation interrupted the process.
The defense of the former executives even described the disbursement as a "mordida" (bribe), an expression recorded in a conversation intercepted by the Police between Roselli and the Venezuelan businessman Rodolfo Reyes. The former CEO has framed that word in an informal conversation, although he maintains that the payments were assumed due to the expectations created around Zapatero's supposed intervention.
Roselli has also stated that Plus Ultra received information about the rescue's approval before it was officially communicated. According to his version, Julio Martínez Martínez warned on February 26, 2021, that the decision had been made. The airline learned of SEPI's formal support on March 2, and the Council of Ministers authorized the operation a week later, on March 9.
The former executive interpreted that warning as a sign that Zapatero's circle handled privileged information. The investigation will have to determine where that knowledge actually came from, who transmitted the decision, and whether any irregular intervention occurred during the administrative processing.
The statement largely coincides with the one offered this Monday by Julio Martínez Sola, founder and former president of Plus Ultra. Martínez Sola maintained that he had a ten-minute phone conversation with Zapatero on April 30, 2020, when the paralysis of air traffic had left the company in a critical situation.
According to the former head of the airline, Zapatero indicated that he could help him and referred him to a person he trusted, Julio Martínez Martínez. From that moment on, the consulting contracts were signed. Martínez Sola was also unable to specify what steps the former president took, with whom he spoke, or how he could influence the obtaining of the 53 million.
His testimony also represents a change from the version he defended months ago in the Senate, where he assured that the rescue responded to "a regulated process with controls, reports, and very strict conditions" and denied any preferential treatment. Before Calama, he has now admitted that they paid "in case of doubt" and that they assumed the cost as an investment to save the company.
The trail of the rescue reaches tax havens
A good part of Roselli's interrogation has focused on the subsequent destination of public money and on the bridge loans that allowed Plus Ultra to remain operational until receiving the aid. The former financial director has placed the origin of that financing in Rodolfo Reyes, former main shareholder of the airline and currently sought through an international arrest warrant.
Investigators are examining whether part of the rescue was used to repay loans from opaque business structures. Roselli has admitted that the company transferred money to bank accounts located in territories considered tax havens and that this circumstance was not expressly communicated to SEPI.
He has also indicated that the public body in charge of supervising the loan never asked about the recipient banks. The former executive has offered to hand over the minutes and emails of the follow-up meetings held with SEPI, documentation that will allow verifying what information the state company received about Plus Ultra's financial situation and international movements.
The airline maintains that it met the requirements to access the Fund for Support for the Solvency of Strategic Companies and denies being a shell company. Its former managers attribute the admitted irregularities to the desperate situation the company was going through during the pandemic and defend that Plus Ultra retained employees, paid taxes, and carried out real air activity.
Calama is investigating Zapatero as an alleged leader of a network of influence peddling and money laundering. The procedure analyzes the movement of around 1.95 million euros through companies, contracts, and financial channels that the investigation considers suspicious. In another part of the proceedings, the origin and taxation of jewels valued at 1.3 million euros found in a safe in his office are being examined.
The former President of the Government has denied any intervention in the rescue, rejects having collected a commission and maintains that the payments he received from Análisis Relevante remunerated real consulting work. He also denies the telephone conversation recounted by Martínez Sola and maintains his innocence in the entire procedure.
The two statements held this week offer the judge coinciding versions about the 1% payment and the role attributed within Plus Ultra to the 'Zapatero group'. The testimony of both executives still leaves pending the central piece of that accusation, the identification of the specific actions that the former president would have carried out for the airline to receive the 53 million euros.
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