Julito, a running partner and business associate on the Plus Ultra case, dismantles Zapatero’s defence

Madrid. Former Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero has, in his own way, gone into great detail about his relationship with his friend Julito Martínez. They used to go for a run together every morning, covering 8 km. We even know the brand of trainers they wore. Zapatero mentioned this in a rather sharp-tongued reply during a hearing before the Senate committee investigating the so-called ‘Operation Delorme’. The investigation takes its name from the 17th-century French doctor who first began protecting himself with a surgical mask; indeed, it was looking into bribes relating to the purchase of masks during the pandemic. Meanwhile, cases of suspected corruption in Spain have multiplied.

Another case concerns the funds disbursed by the Sánchez government through SEPI, the public company that manages state holdings. In 2021, it granted a loan of 53 million euros to the Venezuelan airline Plus Ultra. The deal aroused suspicion not only among opposition politicians – such as the economist and Liberal MEP Luis Garicano, who unsuccessfully lodged a complaint about it in Brussels – but also among a judge at the Madrid court, Esperanza Collazos, who suspended the second instalment after discovering that part of the first had been used for payments to PDVSA, the Venezuelan state-owned oil company and the Chavista regime’s financial stronghold. The judge then went on holiday and the colleague who replaced her lifted the suspension, as Plus Ultra was at risk of insolvency. Finally, the investigation was closed but has been reopened on the initiative of the public prosecutors’ offices in France and Switzerland, which are investigating suspicious money flows between Europe and Venezuela. It was in this context that, on 11 December, searches were carried out at Plus Ultra’s Madrid headquarters and the president and founder of the airline, Julio Martínez Sola, and Zapatero’s friend, Julito Martínez Martínez (the nickname is necessary to avoid confusion), were taken into police custody. It is in this regard that the senators wish to ascertain the true nature of his relationship with the former prime minister.

The two have known each other since 2011, when Julito bought a flat from Mr and Mrs Zapatero. That year, he was still Prime Minister, and the deed was signed at the Moncloa Palace, the seat of government. It seems that a shared love of jogging cemented their friendship. A love of Venezuela and business did the rest. Zapatero has never made a secret of his frequent trips to Caracas; on the contrary, he boasts about them: they demonstrate a deep understanding of a reality that, he says, Europe culpably ignores. Since 2015, he has acted as a diplomatic mediator between the government and the opposition and, since at least 2018, his running partner has accompanied him on flights chartered by the Chavista regime; the latter claims to have met “the lady” Delcy Rodríguez through Zapatero.

As the owner of several shell companies (including one in Dubai), Julito pretended to be paying for consultancy services but was in fact paying commissions in exchange for favours, such as putting pressure on the Sánchez government to approve the loan to Plus Ultra, a company which was itself a client of Julito and his shell companies. Meanwhile, Zapatero’s daughters were formatting their father’s reports, and Julito was paying out generous fees (one million euros). According to his recent statements, “they were paid for three years without doing any work”.

Last Monday, both he and the directors of Plus Ultra broke their silence and essentially confirmed the prosecution’s case. The chairman of Plus Ultra (the other Martínez) admitted in writing what everyone already knew, namely that the airline was more Venezuelan than Spanish, with a major shareholder: Rodolfo Reyes, a man close to the Chavista leadership, the businessman who enriched himself by skimming off the ‘Clap’ programme, the food scheme designed to feed Venezuela’s poor. Contradicting Zapatero, Martínez writes that it was the former prime minister who rang him from an anonymous number to guarantee his assistance with the loan dossier, but that from that moment onwards he would speak only to Julito. The latter, having submitted his defence statement, also testified yesterday before Judge Calama and Public Prosecutor Elena Lorente – the very same prosecutor who secured the conviction of the leading economist of the Spanish right, Rodrigo Rato, former director of the IMF, deputy prime minister and minister in the governments of José María Aznar (making it difficult, in short, to speak of a conspiracy by conservative judges against progressives). Julito confirmed that he had no political influence whatsoever and acted merely as an intermediary between Zapatero and the clients that the latter procured for him. Judge Calama described him as Zapatero’s ‘courier’.