For the first time in the history of Spanish democracy, a former president of the Government, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, will have to testify as a defendant in court.

It will do so on June 2 for the case known as “Plus Ultra.”

Previously, former president Mariano Rajoy testified for the corruption plot known as the Gürtel case, but as a witness.

The socialist politician is accused of influence peddling and other crimes related to the alleged money laundering from Venezuela.

After governing Spain between 2004 and 2011, Rodríguez Zapatero took an active role in relations with Venezuela and in attempts at political mediation between the government and the opposition of the South American country.

After citing him as a defendant, the judge of the National Court (court that covers the entire country) in charge of the case ordered the Economic and Fiscal Crime Unit (UDEF) to search his office, as well as the headquarters of a company owned by his daughters.

The judge considers that there are indications of "a stable and hierarchical structure of influence peddling" in which the objective was "to obtain economic benefits through intermediation and the exercise of influence before public bodies in favor of third parties", and, mainly, the aviation company Plus Ultra.

They estimate the alleged irregular commissions that Zapatero and people around him could have received at 1.95 million euros.

Rodríguez Zapatero defended his innocence in a video in which he claimed to have always acted with “absolute respect for legality.”

But what is the Plus Ultra case and what are its connections with Venezuela?

An airline rescued

The Plus Ultra airline company was created in 2011 under the presidency of Julio Martínez Sola and with people from the defunct airline Air Madrid.

Its flights mainly connect destinations in Latin America, such as Bogotá, Cartagena de Indias, Lima and Buenos Aires, with Spain.

During the covid-19 pandemic, one of the most affected economic sectors in Spain was tourism. For this reason, the government of socialist Pedro Sánchez launched an economic rescue for several airline companies that involved a total expenditure of 839 million euros (US$1,031 million at today's exchange rate) of which a part has already been returned.

The chosen companies were classified as strategic companies for the Spanish economy and the country's connectivity.

The main companies rescued were Air Europa, Air Nostrum and Volotea.

They were joined by Plus Ultra, the smallest of all, with a smaller market share and which received a ransom of 53 million euros (US$61.43 million). The rescue was justified by its strategic condition on niche routes to Latin America and that its disappearance would have harmed competition in long-distance tourism.

This rescue generated doubts, especially among the right-wing parties PP and Vox.

A first case filed

The two parties filed complaints in this regard. So did the Spanish organization Clean Hands, led by Miguel Bernad, linked to the extreme right, and which has gained notoriety by filing judicial complaints about alleged cases of political corruption that have frequently ended up archived.

In the complaints denouncing the rescue, there was talk of possible crimes of embezzlement, prevarication and influence peddling.

In 2023, the case ended up being archived after the State Attorney's Office and Attorney General's Office concluded that there was insufficient evidence of a crime.

“The commission of a crime does not appear to be duly justified,” Judge Esperanza Collazos specified at the time, while arguing that the decree of urgent measures to support the economy and employment due to the pandemic had been correctly applied.

A new investigation

Later, in 2024, Spain's Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office received two requests for international cooperation to put an end to a “criminal organization” that pointed to the possibility that the money from the rescue of the Plus Ultra airline had been used to fuel a money laundering plot in Venezuela.

Specifically, France and Switzerland asked to investigate six people, among whom was not former President Zapatero.

In October of that year, the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office filed a first complaint before the National Court, an institution that has now charged Zapatero. At that time, the complaint was against citizens of Venezuela, Peru, the Netherlands and a Spaniard.

But the Investigating Court 2 rejected the complaint, considering that the facts constituted a crime of money laundering not entirely committed abroad, so the special court was not competent.

The case was referred to the same court that had investigated the 2021 complaints, but last February the National Court took it over.

The accusation against Zapatero is based on conversations and company records that were carried out last December after the president and owner of Plus Ultra, Julio Martínez Sola, were arrested; CEO Roberto Roselli and businessman Julio Martínez Martínez, friend of Zapatero.

This Tuesday's court order indicates that the former Spanish president had a "direct intervention" in "international operations of high economic value", among them "gold, purchase and sale of shares or currencies."

The connection with Venezuela

In 2017, at the height of the economic and social crisis in Venezuela and when all airlines were leaving that country, Plus Ultra landed and began operations with flights from Caracas to Madrid and Tenerife.

When he did it, it did not go unnoticed. The then Venezuelan Minister of Tourism, Marleny Contreras, wife of Chavismo's number two, Diosdado Cabello, and mother of the current representative of the same portfolio, Daniella Cabello, celebrated the arrival of the company with a post on her social networks and considered it an "achievement that consolidates the advance of the economic development of the Homeland."

In an investigation carried out in 2018 by Venezuelan journalist Roberto Deniz in Armando Info, he highlighted that the Plus Ultra company “forged a partnership with little-known Venezuelan investors.”

They were Rodolfo Reyes and Raif El Arigie and, according to Deniz's research, this incorporation “meant the expansion of Plus Ultra.”

In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, when Venezuelan airspace was closed much more severely than in other European countries, Plus Ultra managed to get the Government of Nicolás Maduro to allow it to charter planes to repatriate Spanish citizens from Venezuela between 2020 and 2021.

Now the link seems to be even more intricate and Plus Ultra, according to the Prosecutor's complaint, appears as a “signatory and beneficiary” of some alleged loan contracts with three companies dedicated to laundering money from the embezzlement of funds from Venezuelan officials.

Specifically, sales of gold from the Bank of Venezuela and CLAP funds (Local Supply and Production Committees) are cited, a mechanism created by the authorities to centralize the import of food that was then distributed to the population.

It is not the first time that the CLAP scheme is under suspicion of corruption. The ally and alleged figurehead of Nicolás Maduro, Alex Saab, recently extradited to the United States, was accused on countless occasions, also in investigations by Armando Info, of benefiting from million-dollar contracts by CLAP.

The suspicion is that the public bailout money was used to move these funds through loans, contracts and international financial structures, thus making it difficult to trace allegedly illicit capital.

The judge also investigates whether Rodríguez Zapatero used his network of contacts and political influence to participate in these financial structures designed to move and hide money abroad.