The judge rejects the nullity of the case against Zapatero

MadridThe investigating judge of the Audiencia Nacional in the Plus Ultra case, José Luis Calama, supports the investigation against José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and rejects the nullity of proceedings incident in the case that the defense of the former Spanish president had filed. The magistrate argues that Zapatero filed the brief "outside the 20-day deadline stipulated by law from when the party has access to the proceedings." In parallel, Calama is moving forward with the investigation and is summoning the president of Plus Ultra, Julio Martínez Sola, and the company's CEO, Roberto Roselli Mielle, to testify as investigated parties on September 7 and 8 at nine in the morning.

In a ruling to which ARA has had access, Calama points out that the deadline for filing a nullity incident is 20 days, which begin to run from the moment the affected party has effective knowledge of the act that violates fundamental rights. Zapatero's lawyer filed a nullity incident on June 25 for alleged violation of fundamental rights, days after the 20-day deadline stipulated by law from when the parties have material access to the proceedings in the case had expired. 

an incident of nullity for alleged violation of fundamental rights, days after the 20-day deadline stipulated by law from when the parties have material access to the proceedings in the case had expired. 

In the appeal, the former Spanish president requested the exclusion from the proceedings of twelve resolutions, including the entry and search of his office on May 18 and the separate piece to investigate the origin of the seized jewelry, the first expert report of which gave a preliminary value of 1.3 million euros. Zapatero's defense claimed the "general nullity" of the investigation, considering that the rights to a fair trial with all guarantees, effective judicial protection, presumption of innocence, privacy, data protection, and the secrecy of third-party communications had been violated. Specifically, the former president's lawyer denounced the incorporation into the proceedings of evidence "illicitly analyzed" that has served "to justify the adoption of other measures limiting fundamental rights." Thus, he requested the exclusion from the proceedings of evidence obtained in all the agreed-upon entries and searches.

Calama recalls that Zapatero filed the incident following access to the Cloud platform, which occurred on May 25, when the communication was sent to all parties. He states that the former president should have filed the nullity petition by June 23 at the latest, and that he did so two days later. "The untimeliness deprives the judicial body of the competence to examine the merits of the alleged injury, because the incident cannot operate as a mechanism to question investigative decisions that should have been challenged in time," the magistrate rules in the same document.

In the ruling, the judge argues that "it is not identified with subjective evaluations or with the strategic convenience of the challenge, but with real and sufficient access to the content of the action: disclosure of the proceedings, delivery of copies, consultation of the file or any act that allows knowing the existence and scope of the injury".

The Prosecutor's Office asks the judge for a new report on Zapatero's jewels

Meanwhile, the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office has asked Judge José Luis Calama to expand the information on the jewelry that the UDEF found in the safe of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero's office. The public ministry wants to know the current market value of the jewelry and the date it was manufactured. This has been reported by El Mundo and is confirmed by fiscal sources to ARA. Initially, the auction house Ansorena valued them at 1.3 million euros, a figure that led the instructor of the Plus Ultra case to open a separate piece to investigate Zapatero also for tax offense and smuggling. 24 hours ago, in an interview with Spanish Television, the former Spanish president limited himself to explaining that the jewelry was a "personal courtesy gift from many years ago" and that they had "neither use nor destination" nor "pecuniary interest". And he even admitted that, seen in perspective, he probably wouldn't have accepted them: "They give me a profound allergy."