Barcelona is at the centre of a new corruption investigation after a UDEF police report, accessed by La Sexta, alleged that former Spanish president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and his daughters, Alba and Laura Rodríguez Espinosa, received more than €4 million over five years through the Plus Ultra network and other companies.
The report says €2.5 million was found in accounts linked to Zapatero and his daughters, with payments from companies including Análisis Relevante, Inteligencia Prospectiva, Gate Center, Thinking Heads Group and Thinking Heads Americas. It also says Zapatero separately received another €1.5 million for consultancy work.
According to the UDEF report, the main final beneficiary of the funds obtained by the network would be José Luis Rodríguez and the company Whatthefav, whose administrators and partners are his daughters. The report says the transfers were justified by contracts that served as documentary cover.
The findings also list further income of €1.5 million in Zapatero’s account from companies including Kreab Iberia, Focus Social Research, Chinalink Asia Holdings Limited, Mimo Advisors, Kreab Worldwide, Bright Digital Solutions, Yewee International Trade Limited and Zayed Award for Human Fraternity.
Judge José Luis Calama, who is overseeing the case at Spain’s National Court, has frozen 19 bank accounts. Six are in Zapatero’s name, two are jointly held with his wife, Sonsoles Espinosa, and 13 belong to company accounts linked to the alleged network, including Whatthefav.
The freeze covers the corporate structure that investigators say was used for influence peddling. Calama, the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office and the UDEF place the former socialist president at the vertex of the network. The investigation is ongoing. For more Catalonia-wide reporting, see our news coverage.