The police operation that ended yesterday with the arrest of the president and CEO of the airline Plus Ultra has its origin in a complaint from the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office for alleged money laundering from Venezuelan corruption. The police suspect that the money the company obtained from the 53 million euro bailout by the Government in 2021 was used to pay three loans granted by companies that in turn had obtained gold money and Venezuelan aid thanks to the corruption of officials.
Anti-Corruption has been pursuing this network for more than a year, which has tentacles in Spain, Venezuela, Switzerland, France and Panama and which culminated yesterday with the arrest by the Economic and Fiscal Crime Unit (UDEF) of the National Police of the president of Plus Ultra, Julio Martínez, and the CEO, Roberto Roselli.
The judge investigates a criminal organization based in France, Switzerland and Spain with money from Venezuela
Police are investigating how the airline received a series of loans from companies. These in turn would have injected illicit funds from acts of embezzlement committed by public officials in Venezuela “of very high amounts” (public funds from CLAP programs and gold sales from the Bank of Venezuela). This money would go, according to the investigation, to other countries to be laundered, among them in Spain with the purchase of real estate or sale of luxury watches, among other things. In addition, they made simulated loans so that with the return of the money it would be laundered and within the legal circuit. For that, Plus Ultra was used. And in this way the company would find a way to return the money obtained from the Spanish Government thanks to the injection of 53 million euros within the aid package for the pandemic.
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According to the data handled by Anticorruption, the company that granted the loan to Plus Ultra – and which was fully reimbursed with Spanish public money – sold Venezuelan gold worth 30 million euros to a company in the United Arab Emirates. The money received ended up in an account in Panama in the name of another company.
The controversy surrounding the rescued airline now rises from its ashes. And it does so through a cause, still secret, that, according to sources close to the investigation, could cause a shock wave with incalculable consequences. Yesterday, the UDEF broke into the headquarters of the airline company with ties to Venezuela in search of documentation related to an alleged crime of money laundering.
Two years ago, the investigative court number 15 of Madrid, the same one that revived the new investigation, decided to archive the case that investigated the rescue of Plus Ultra. Judge Esperanza Collazos understood that there was no indication that the aid had been illegal. Even the Court of Auditors studied it, without finding any anomaly.
At that time the investigations dealt with the crimes of embezzlement of public funds, bribery, prevarication, influence peddling, obtaining subsidies or aid from the Administration by falsifying the requirements. The State Society of Industrial Participations (SEPI) was also investigated for this matter.
The rescue of Plus Ultra was controversial because the Government, through SEPI, granted the operation two years after it had requested a loan. During the court case, the investigator heard two contradictory reports from experts that did not allow her to move forward with the case. Some put on the table the debts that the company was carrying, which forced it to request a participatory loan of 6.3 million euros from the Panamanian bank Penacorp. This is why the experts, on the one hand, defended that the economic decline of Plus Ultra was not a product of the coronavirus pandemic, so the rescue would not be justified, while on the other hand they defended that it was.
This same judge has decided to admit an Anti-Corruption complaint against an alleged criminal organization based in France, Switzerland and Spain, allegedly constituted by foreigners, nationalized Spaniards, and at least one Spanish lawyer, dedicated to carrying out acts of money laundering in the three countries mentioned and the illicit funds coming from Venezuelan corruption, according to investigation sources.
