The germ of it Plus Ultra Case because last week the president and deputy advisor of the company, respectively Julio Martínez Sola and Roberto Roselli, were arrested in Switzerland and France. Both countries sent information to Anticorruption Tax last year, putting on the table names such as Luis Felipe Baca Arubulu, an exbanquero from the Swiss country, and Danilo Alfonso Díazgranados, a broker from Venezuela. The National Police then registered several properties under the names of the two in Spain and the tax authorities opened a secret investigation to investigate an alleged organization dedicated to money laundering across Europe from Venezuela and which was able to use 53 million euros to save the airline that the government sold in 2021.
The brother of Felipe Baca Arbulu (50 years old), named Enrique and his last name (57 years old), worked in several Madrid companies dedicated to economic consulting, intermediation activities or real estate investments, according to the commercial register. Among them, Atitlan Capital, which was extinguished precisely in July this year, when the Fiscalia Anticorruption was working on the investigation of a white person in which his name also appeared. Sources of the cause explained to EL PAÍS that Felipe Martín Baca worked in a Swiss bank and that after leaving the private bank he moved to France. Allí, through one of his companies, bought two houses in Hossegor, a region of Las Landas, very close to the border with the Basque Country. And in Madrid there is also a floor on Calle del Príncipe de Vergara, in the central district of Salamanca. There isn’t much information published about him or his brother, but both appear in numerous digital media articles cited as technology experts, energy experts, or consulting analysts.
After receiving a petition from France and another from the Fiscalía de Ginebra, sources of the cause explain that the Unidad de Delincuencia Económica y Fiscal (UDEF) of the Police organized last year an operation of entries and registrations which ended with the infiltration of material of Martín Baca and Díazgranados, among others, in buildings in the capital, Tenerife and Majorca.
Buying floor coverings or selling luxury watches were part of the activity to launder money from alleged malpractice crimes through gold or welfare in Venezuela. The Fiscalía reports that “in some cases, through commercial companies (used) to receive sums of money from abroad”, investigators laundered money either with the acquisition of real estate or with the “subscription of loan contracts from the company Plus Ultra”.
Díazgranados (61) has been living for a decade now between New York and an exclusive residential area in the Dominican town of La Romana, according to the aforementioned sources. Venezuelan digital media Armando.info published an investigation which details that he was “one of the favorite financial operators of Chavismo, during the era of Hugo Chávez”. A leak of documents from Swiss private bank CBH revealed its meteoric rise to fame and which was responsible for managing €1.5 billion from Venezuela to invest in UK bonds.
The Anticorruption Fiscal Service located Baca Arbulu and Díazgranados as part of a “suspected criminal organization based in France, Switzerland and Spain, likely made up of nationalized foreign Spaniards.” In the information from these countries there was also mention of a Spanish lawyer, other citizens (Peruvian and Venezuelan) and the Dutchman Simón Leendert Verhoeven.
The latter currently guaranteed three venture capital funds which were used to finance Plus Ultra with loans of around 1.3 million euros. Two were subscribed between October and November 2020 – through a company domiciled in England and represented by Verhoeven and with a fund domiciled in Switzerland – and one more in 2021, by a company registered in Gibraltar. Anticorruption believes that the airline diverted the rescue aid during “closures following receipt of it” which took place on March 9, 2021, with the green light from the Council of Ministers.
The investigation in France remains very secret, according to known sources, and the same thing is happening in Spain, which is why we still lack knowledge about many details of the so-called white operation. At present, judicial sources confirm that both the president of Plus Ultra and the delegated councilors Julio Martínez Sola and Roberto Roselli are among those responsible imputed to Juzgado de Instrucción number 15 of Madrid. Also appearing are Julio Martínez Martínez, a businessman who runs a large number of companies headquartered in an industrial building in Alicante, and a Spanish lawyer who allegedly helped with the purchase of property. Four were arrested by the UDEF last week and were released on Saturday with precautionary measures.
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