The investigation into Zapatero’s jewellery continues

The Spanish Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office has asked Judge José Luis Calama – who is leading the investigation into the bailout of the airline Plus Ultra, in which former Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero is under investigation – to commission a further expert report to determine the value of the jewellery seized during the search on 19 May at the former prime minister’s private office.

An initial analysis had been entrusted to Ansorena, a prestigious Madrid-based jeweller and auction house, in collaboration with the Spanish Gemmological Institute. The result is now well known: the estimated value is said to be over 1.3 million euros (1,323,915 to be precise), but the Public Prosecutor’s Office suspects it may be higher. Ansorena and the Gemmological Institute, in fact, assessed the cost of the raw materials without taking into account the labour required to produce the items, nor the profit margins that would be applied in a retail sale. In short, the investigators want to ascertain the true market value of Zapatero’s treasure. We are talking about around a hundred pieces of fine jewellery, among which a white gold necklace set with diamonds and two natural Zambian emeralds stands out, with a provisional estimated value of 278,000 euros.

The second expert report had already been requested prior to the television interview Zapatero gave on Thursday, but it certainly cannot be said that this long-awaited interview has clarified anything in the meantime. The suspect remains adamant about the origin of the jewellery: he claims they were ‘gestures of courtesy’ and insists on discretion regarding them. He guarantees he will provide explanations in due course, although for the time being his defence strategy on all fronts has been to seek the annulment of the proceedings. A motion which Judge Calama rejected on the grounds that the statutory time limits had expired. 

During the preliminary hearing on 17 June, Zapatero had stated that it would take him no more than ten days to clarify the origin of the jewellery, whilst many members of his entourage were speaking publicly on the matter, thereby preventing him from putting his neck on the line by telling falsehoods. The political scientist Luis Arroyo, for example, had said that it was a family inheritance worth no more than 50,000 euros. Then the theory emerged that it was a gift dating back to 2007 from the former Saudi monarch Abdullah, who has since passed away.

It is no coincidence that this second expert report would also serve to establish the date on which the gemstones were set, in order to then date the donation. The statute of limitations for the offence also depends on this, although there are at least two possible offences relating to the jewellery: tax evasion and smuggling. According to the Ministry of Finance technicians’ union, as reported by the newspaper El Independiente, criminal liability for any tax offence would be time-barred if the donation took place before May 2021. In any case, the union states, Zapatero would have to hand over the jewellery to the State if it were proven that he received it whilst serving as Prime Minister. All the more so as his behaviour contravened his own code of ethics, approved two years earlier, which stipulated that gifts ‘beyond customary practice’ should not be accepted, whilst those ‘of greater institutional significance’ should, in fact, be handed over to the state. But of course, this is just one of many points of irony that now abound in Spain regarding how the Socialists prefer to live free from the rules of socialism.

Take, for example, the wealth tax. In Spain, the threshold above which the tax is levied is 700,000 euros. On the eve of the 2008 elections, this ‘philosopher’s stone’ of so much of the global left – the tax that, on its own, would restore primordial equality by taxing the rich – Zapatero simply decided to abolish it. He won the election, but was forced to reinstate it in 2011 as one of the measures needed to avert Spanish bankruptcy, at a time when Portugal and Greece were already under the troika’s intervention. However, the wealth tax is a levy which, in Spain, is devolved to the various autonomous communities, and Zapatero lived in Madrid, where the liberal centre-right had been in power for 30 years. In particular, since 2019, the region has been governed by Isabel Díaz Ayuso, who grants total exemption from the tax. Zapatero, therefore, would not have paid a single cent, but perhaps there were other reasons why he chose not to declare those jewels. This is one of the things the magistrates are trying to uncover.