The rescue of 53 million euros granted to the airline Plus Ultra by the Council of Ministers on March 9, 2021 was surrounded, from the first moment, in the shadow of suspicion. He Court of Instruction number 15 of Madrid had … to archive in January 2023, for formal reasons, the investigation which had been opened on this subject following a complaint from Manos Médicas, Partido Popular and Vox. But today, almost three years later, he takes up the case again and yesterday ordered the arrest of the president and general director of the company, Julio Martínez and Roberto Roselli, respectively; clone the servers at its headquarters and carry out several searches, notably at the homes of the two arrested. All this after months of investigations, which included surveillance of the suspects. The magistrate suspects that part of these funds was used to laundering money from Venezuelan corruptionaccording to sources consulted by ABC.
On October 21, 2024, the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office filed a complaint, then before the national court, arising from separate requests for international cooperation from the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office and Geneva Prosecutor’s Office. The French authorities requested the entry and search of homes in Madrid, Pozuelo (in the same community) and Tenerife, while the Swiss added an additional home, in this case in Mallorca, to the investigations they were carrying out into a money laundering network originating from corruption crimes in Venezuela. All these addresses were linked to people who led or collaborated in the plot and the searches were authorized by the Central Investigating Court number 1 of the National Court.
In its complaint, according to documents to which ABC had access, Anti-Corruption focused on a “criminal organization based in France, Switzerland and Spain, allegedly made up of foreigners, Spanish nationals and at least one Spanish lawyer”. The plot would be dedicated to “carrying out acts of laundering in the three aforementioned countries and illicit funds coming from acts of embezzlement committed by officials in Venezuela of very high amounts“. Specifically, these laundered funds would come from the programs of the so-called Local Supply and Production Committees (CLAP) and gold sales from the Bank of Venezuela.
The Plus Ultra airline, according to anti-corruption suspicions, would have made abusive use of Spanish public aid, in particular part of the 53 million euros from the rescue, because this company appeared as a “signatory and beneficiary of certain allegations loan contracts with three companies of the criminal organizationinvolved in the sale of gold, and these contracts cover, in turn, the corresponding returns of the Spanish company Plus Ultra, on dates following the receipt of public aid, to the foreign accounts of companies that are part of the criminal organization.
Several of those involved, sometimes through trading companies, received sums of money from abroad to purchase real estate and signed loan contracts with Plus Ultra which were fully repaid.
In the anti-corruption complaint, reference was further made to the “sale of gold for an amount of approximately 30 million euros to a company in the United Arab Emirates by the company that granted the aforementioned loans; the reference by the same company to another company in an account in Panama; criminal and/or police record in our country, and that the sale of luxury watches has been used for money laundering purposes.”
A before and an after
The rescue of the Plus Ultra airline marked a before and after for the Fund to support the solvency of strategic companies (Fasee), a 10 billion euro mechanism managed by SEPI that the government activated during the pandemic to save from bankruptcy large companies whose activity had collapsed due to the outbreak of the health crisis. Saving Plus Ultra, an airline with two planes and without any weight for Spanish commercial aviation, cost the State these 53 million euros which, combined with some alleged links with businessmen close to the Venezuelan government of Nicolás Maduro and the alleged mediation of former Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, raised such political dust that it stopped the granting of new bailouts for months.
The year before its rescue, Plus Ultra only had one 0.1% market share in Spanish commercial aviation and losses of several million dollars. He requested help from the SEPI fund because no bank wanted to lend him money during the pandemic, even with the public guarantee from the Official Credit Institute (ICO). The rescue was justified by the “strategic condition” of air transport in Spain as a contributor to tourism, “one of the economic engines of the country”. The government also stressed that Plus Ultra was “a niche airline” that operates long-distance flights to Latin American countries, including Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela.
About The Author
