If it is confirmed that the jewels found in the Zapatero case were part of a fraud, the economic question is: why jewels? Why would someone choose this circuit and not an intermediary company or an account abroad?The answer lies in the very nature of the object. A jewel concentrates a lot of value in a very small space. It can be handed over in person. It can be kept in a safe. It can be transported with relative ease. It does not require any bank transfer, leaves no digital trace, and can remain outside the declared circuit for years. From an economic point of view, it functions as black money converted into an object. This is its appeal. Whoever receives a jewel can keep it without it appearing anywhere. It is invisible money. If no one sees it, if no one declares it, and if no one asks about its origin, the wealth exists, but it remains off the tax radar. The tax obligation continues to exist, but the tax authorities cannot detect anything.The problem arises when this jewel has to be converted back into money. A jewel does not pay expenses. It does not pay a pension. To recover liquidity, it must be sold. And here begins the second part of the circuit. If it is sold on the formal market, the invoice appears, the buyer's identification, traceability, and the key question: where did this jewel come from? If it comes from a hidden payment, a disguised donation, or an irregular import, the regular sale can uncover the previous fraud. For this reason, these types of assets often end up in parallel markets. They are sold, at a discount, to buyers who are also interested in operating outside the system. The seller receives less than they would get in a jewelry store or at a formal auction, but avoids declaring. The buyer pays less and may be transforming opaque cash into a small, valuable, and transportable asset. The loss of price is compensated, in part, because taxes and controls do not emerge.In an ordinary jewelry purchase, the applicable VAT in Spain is the general rate of 21%. However, other taxes may arise depending on the origin, transfer, or possession of the asset: wealth tax, inheritance tax, gift tax, transfer tax, or capital gains. The opaque circuit seeks precisely to avoid this.The economic route is this: hidden money, jewelry, storage, opaque resale, new hidden money. It is not a sophisticated mechanism. It is ancient. It is the most efficient way to move wealth without going through the bank.The judicial key in the Zapatero case will be to prove its origin. A jewel can come from an inheritance, a legitimate purchase, a declared donation, or an illegal operation. Economically, the difference lies in the trace. When the trace is missing, it is fraud against the Treasury.

The G-7, which sounds like a powerful soap, are meeting in Évian, which is where the mineral water of the same name comes from. But the representatives of the capitalist economies that take the biggest slice of the pie don't think they make that association because I don't imagine them at the supermarket. You could only find Merkel at the supermarket, but that was a long time ago, and that's why she's so missed. Among other things, and with all due ideological disagreements. The G-7 leaders have these obscene meetings, they call them informal, where all that's missing now is Donald Trump entering without any grace and pretending to joke by saying: I’m the boss. And the rest, of course, applaud the boss as the scroungers of all time have done. But it's understandable, poor things, what else can they do? Trump is a man who celebrates his birthday with a bang. The surprising thing (and I suppose fortunately) is that he continues to surprise us. What a world must have been created over so many centuries for these types of characters to end up deciding the destiny of humanity. What security has been passed on to them so that they feel they can do as they please at the expense of human lives. And what fear has been passed on to us as an inheritance. It feels very long. Luckily, the men's Football World Cup unites us. Even though it also feels long. 

The PSOE was holding its breath following the indictment of former president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero this Wednesday, and while it is true that the worst imaginable scenario, which was pre-trial detention, did not occur, and the judge did not even order his passport to be revoked, doubts about his case remain the same. This is partly also due to the former president's defense strategy, which has requested more time to explain the origin of the jewelry found in his office – valued at 1.3 million euros – and has also refused to answer about the mobile phone messages of the main shareholder of the company Plus Ultra, Rodolfo Reyes, which are the trigger for the investigation, because his defense is trying to invalidate the evidence. At the end of his statement, the judge made it clear that the testimony had not managed to "discredit the indications" against him, although he admitted that the investigation is in an "embryonic" phase.

"Anything to declare?" Most people have heard this phrase when their plane had just landed. But customs control is more flexible when it affects authorities. Miguel Sebastián, former Minister of Industry (2008-2011), recently recounted how gifts on official trips were managed – at least in his time. In 2008, already on board the Falcon during the return flight from the city of Jeddah (Saudi Arabia), a royal emissary handed him a leather wallet that hid luxury jewelry inside. He decided not to take the gift home and it is currently in a display case at the ministry, but he recalls that the officials told him: "The most common thing was for us ministers to keep the gifts."Sebastián intended to defend the former Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero for the jewelry case that he will have to justify before the judge – which come from "inheritances and gifts", according to his spokesperson. But the former minister ended up opening up the can of worms about whether there are many gifts of this kind on official trips that end up at the homes of monarchs, presidents, and ministers, which often land at Torrejón de Ardoz air base (Madrid), the military facilities where official Falcon-type planes are housed.

The Zapatero family's jewelry is today the main focus of tension in Spanish politics. The former president of the government has just been charged in a separate piece of the one that Judge of the National Court José Luis Calama was already investigating. The immediate consequence, beyond being summoned to testify again, is that as soon as legal action has been initiated regarding his jewelry, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero can no longer regularize them. Article 305.4 of the Penal Code establishes that he could have done so before the investigating judge formally communicated the opening of proceedings.

The procedural situation of former Spanish president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero worsens with each passing day and threatens to become a ordeal for him and also for the PSOE. The episode of the jewels found in a safe in his office, which his entourage initially downplayed and valued at around 50,000 euros, but which have now been appraised at 1.3 million, leaves the former president in a very difficult situation. The judge has decided to open a separate piece of the Plus Ultra case to investigate him for alleged smuggling and tax offense, as he considers that there is no record that they have been declared or that they have a clear origin.

Zapatero's jewels have been making headlines for days and, since this Friday, they are the subject of a new separate piece in the Plus Ultra case at the National Court. Judge José Luis Calama has agreed to also investigate the former Spanish president for the possession of these valuable objects because he considers that there are indications of alleged tax and smuggling offenses.there are indications of alleged tax and smuggling offenses. The basis for his decision is the preliminary appraisal of the jewels – located in the office of the former PSOE leader – which have been valued at 1,323,915 euros. The appraisal report, to which ARA has had access, analyzes the estimated market price (including taxes) of up to 79 pieces of jewelry, among which necklaces worth more than 220,000 euros and earrings worth 80,000 euros stand out.

The four defendants so far in connection with The theft of jewels from the Louvre museum in Paris on October 19 They are criminals residing in the Paris suburbs, with records for offenses that "do not fall within the spectrum of organized crime." This was explained by Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau in statements to France Info radio, detailing that the four had prior connections to the robbery and that the two charged this Saturday were a couple. "They are close acquaintances; they all lived in Seine-Saint-Denis (on the outskirts of Paris), two of them were in a relationship and had children. We have profiles that are not well-known within organized crime, but who end up committing very serious acts," Beccuau said. The prosecutor asserts that, with the evidence they have, they believe they have already arrested three of the four members of the group (in addition to the partner of one of them, charged as an accomplice) that perpetrated the theft of eight French crown jewels, valued at 88 million euros.