Former Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero has appealed the authorization granted by the investigating judge of the Plus Ultra case, José Luis Calama, allowing the National Police to investigate bank accounts of the former socialist leader, his daughters, Alba and Laura, and his secretary Gertrudis Alcázar, among others.
In a document sent to the judge, the former president’s lawyer, Víctor Moreno, requests to revoke the magistrate’s permission to the Economic and Fiscal Crime Unit (Udef) of the National Police to “expand the information deemed pertinent” regarding the mentioned bank products under investigation.
Calama authorized last week the Udef to investigate the bank accounts of Zapatero and his circle. Specifically, the judge instructed the agents to “expand the information deemed pertinent” about several bank accounts, including some belonging to Julio Martínez, Zapatero’s partner also charged and owner of Análisis Relevante, one of the companies under suspicion.
The judge also ordered the opening of a separate file in which all the banking information received will be fully incorporated, “with said documentation being kept in that restricted scope in order to proceed, within that same framework, to the purification and elimination of data irrelevant to the case or likely to affect the privacy of the persons involved.”
Now, the lawyer requests the precautionary suspension of the authorization granted to the police unit to expand information and the issuance of requests to banking entities, at least until the magistrate rules on the present appeal.
Additionally, he requests to “revoke the extension of the request to the entity’s internal communications and with the client” and that a clear end date be set “to the period subject to the request, limiting its temporal scope to a maximum of December 2025.”
Regarding the opening of a reserved file in which these proceedings are framed, the lawyer demands that it be the justice administration lawyer, “under the supervision of the instructor,” who is responsible for the “purification of the content” of the banking information.
“Criteria for the purge”
Zapatero’s lawyer advocates that “clear criteria for the purge” integrated into the reserved information file be established, “ordering the police unit in charge of the analysis to state in their reports not only the data that may be favorable to the police thesis but also to record and appreciate all circumstances and data favorable to the investigated parties.”
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Zapatero’s defense argues that the banking information to which Calama gave access “is very extensive and the highest level of detail is requested.” “This additional authorization to the Udef blurs the scope of the objective that the resolution itself establishes within the framework of a restrictive measure of fundamental rights,” it states.
“From another perspective, moreover, this generic authorization to the Udef prevents control of these requests, both by the judicial authority and by the parties,” it argues. It also warns that “a generic authorization could endorse a prospective investigation.”
The lawyer adds that if data are analyzed without judicial authorization and for purposes different from those of the investigation’s object, “the fundamental right to privacy and personal data” of Zapatero “can be improperly undermined.”
“In short, it cannot be allowed, through this broad authorization, that potentially intimate information be analyzed without judicial authorization nor that prospective inquiry into matters unrelated to the process be conducted,” he adds.
Regarding the opening of the separate file, Moreno states that he finds it “substantially correct,” since “bank accounts reflect a person’s private life and there is a very high inherent risk in this process of leakage of the obtained information.”
All this is framed within the Plus Ultra case, in which the instructor investigates alleged irregularities with the 53 million euro bailout granted by the Government to the airline Plus Ultra during the pandemic, in which the judge places Zapatero as the leader of an alleged influence trafficking network that would have obtained economic benefits in exchange for supposedly influencing said concession, facts for which he agreed to his indictment.
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