Among the multiple signs of irregularities surrounding the state rescue of Plus Ultra, the violation of the duty of secrecy, confirmed by three protagonists, criticized by a government vice-president, and denied by a former PSOE leader, gains strength.
This refers to the accredited leak that occurred in the early afternoon of February 26, 2021, and which, according to the third vice-president, Sara Aagesen, declared this Thursday to Cadena Ser, “should never have happened.”
Julio Martínez Martínez, the Alicante businessman who identifies himself as Zapatero’s “intermediary,” states in his written collaboration with Justice at the Audiencia Nacional that “Mr. José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero was promptly informed of all the steps being taken [to secure the Plus Ultra rescue], and he finally communicated on February 26, 2021, that Sepi was going to grant the loan to Plus Ultra.”
According to the version of the one known as Julito, it was, therefore, the former President of the Government who leaked to him that day that the airline had completed all procedures and that the 53 million euro aid would be granted days later. Martínez proceeded, “immediately,” to inform the real Venezuelan owners of Plus Ultra that the rescue was already unlocked.
The then vice-president of Plus Ultra, Julio Martínez Sola, and the financial director, Roberto Roselli, agree that the tip-off from the plot arrived that day. “On February 26, 2021, Mr. Martínez Martínez reported that Plus Ultra had obtained the favorable proposal for the granting of Sepi aid and that approval would foreseeably occur at the Council of Ministers on March 9.”
Martínez also reported that, previously, on March 2, the rescue would be approved by the so-called Management Council of the Fund for Support to the Solvency of Strategic Companies (Fasee), which included several high-ranking government officials, including Aagesen, along with Sepi.
The current Vice-President of the Government knows that the last procedure was completed that very day because the favorable legal report from the legal advisor Deloitte had finally arrived, and she criticizes the airline for receiving privileged information. “This should never have happened. The information had to remain focused not only on the Management Council but also on the SEPI teams without any kind of leaks. This should never have happened, but it did, according to the information we have been able to ascertain,” she lamented in statements to Cadena Ser.
This criticism of one of the steps in the aid to Plus Ultra is unprecedented in the Government, which has so far clung to the version that everything was correct. It also serves Aagesen to imply that she did not participate in the leak to the plot. She, her cabinet, or her then superior, Teresa Ribera, had access to internal information that allowed predicting an imminent approval of the rescue. The other more economic ministries also did. Especially the one headed by María Jesús Montero, who was in charge of taking the operation to the Council of Ministers.
Up to this point, no one doubts that this breach of confidentiality occurred within government institutions in favor of the plot which, according to the investigating judge José Luis Calama, was led by Zapatero. The only one who questions it is precisely the latter. “I did not intervene in any part of the process. I didn’t know,” he denied this Thursday on TVE.
The alternative is to believe that Martínez, a real estate and footwear businessman from Alicante, had the capacity, without Zapatero’s help, to know that the Deloitte report had arrived at Sepi’s legal department that very morning. Zapatero’s payer denies it: “He had no possibility whatsoever of obtaining anything [for Plus Ultra], much less public or private financing.” And he limits his mission to “intermediating between client and consultant.” That is, between Plus Ultra, which had hired the consultancy Análisis Relevante, and the one who acted as “consultant” for this firm: Zapatero.
He admits that he was the main consultant for Análisis Relevante and that he knew that the administrator of this company, Julito, worked with Plus Ultra. However, his version is that he and his daughters were paid by the consultancy without doing anything for its first client, the airline. Increasingly implausible.
