Caracas Chronicles

It’s always spectacular to see a big shot getting caught. Especially when he’s made a long career at the top of an European democracy under a mask of respectability. And, oh so suddenly, it turns out he’s made a fortune dealing with a Latin American dictatorship.

The sequence was— as people love to say today—worth of a Netflix series. 

Hours before getting on another flight to Caracas, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero decided to stay in Madrid once he knew he had just become the first former prime minister in the history of Spain’s 50-year-old democracy to be indicted for a crime. For those who turn on the phone in the morning across the Atlantic, when it is noon in Spain, the news of the indictment came as one bundle with the footage of Zapatero’s office being raided by an anti-corruption investigative unit of Spain’s National Police Corps, known as UDEF.

Zapatero was indicted by Audiencia National (an equivalent of the Supreme Court) for selling his influence to get a financial relief kit for an airline, Plus Ultra, the smallest of four Spanish carriers that received assistance from Madrid as a result of the demand-side shock during the pandemic. This company, with a fleet of seven aircrafts, was also the youngest of the lot, and had the particular feature of having inaugurated routes to Caracas in the annus horribilis of 2017, a time when international operators were withdrawing from the country en masse. As Armando.Info investigative reporter Roberto Deniz would reveal in December 2018, Plus Ultra’s majority stakeholders were from Venezuela.

Eight years later, Zapatero is being prosecuted over allegations of political influence peddling related to the €53 million bailout of Plus Ultra. He also faces charges of criminal conspiracy, document forgery and money laundering. The judge handling the case describes Zapatero as the head of “a stable and hierarchical influence‑peddling structure” meant to “obtain financial benefits as an intermediary, exerting influence over public bodies on behalf of third parties, mainly Plus Ultra.” At least six other individuals are under investigation, including Plus Ultra’s chairman, its CEO, and Alicante-based businessman Julio Martínez Martínez.

The UDEF report says Zapatero and Martínez were at the center of a structure of businesses and consulting firms meant to syphon money coming from China, Venezuela and Spain into his personal accounts.

This latter will be a key character in this story: Martínez Martínez is not only being accused of acting as Zapatero’s frontman in a number of entities that received payments linked to the Plus Ultra (et al) scheme. His own personal records, such as notebook annotations UDEF just made public, suggest he was fully aware of Zapatero’s business and political dealings with the Maduro regime. That evidence seems to point at both opaque trade deals (over Venezuelan light crude, gold, fuel, asphalt, which were the subject of US sanctions until recently) Martínez and Zapatero may have promoted, and knowledge about a number of high-profile political prisoners released this year. The son-in-law of Edmundo González, security expert Rocío San Miguel and opposition moderate Enrique Márquez (who has publicly praised Zapatero) appear mentioned. Martínez´s notes also provide previously undisclosed details about the contents of a constitutional reform Maduro toyed with, but never brought about after stealing the presidential vote in 2024.

All of this adds to the investigations about shady business in the pandemic that involved Spanish businessman Víctor de Aldama, former Transport Minister and PSOE Organization Secretary José Luis Ábalos, and his close advisor Koldo García. The trio famously met Delcy Rodríguez in the tarmac of the Madrid international airport, for a purported conversation over the sale of Venezuelan gold lingots, despite her being the subject of EU sanctions and therefore unable to step on European soil. These three Spaniards (with Ábalos and Koldo being amongst the closest collaborators of Pedro Sánchez in his primary campaign and early government) are the main actors in a series of corruption scandals that have been getting closer to the Spanish head of government, a darling of the International Left whose reputation has been boosted by a knack for antagonizing Donald Trump. But the former aides of Perro Sanxe have been arrested without bail and indicted (and will soon face a sentencing hearing). His brother is facing trial. His wife has also been indicted and is on the verge of facing trial. And now it looks like his political mentor will also face a lengthy process before Spanish justice.

Just after the Zapatero news broke in Spain, predictable reactions began to come across the political spectrum: bloodthirst at the Right, accusations of conspiracy at the Left. Then, the judge made public the 88-page file, fed with a probe that began in 2024, and the ambiance turned in a second. Many allies of the graft-plagued socialist government admitted that the accusations are solid, the evidence overwhelming, and the outlook quite bleak for Zapatero. The conspiracy theory that this was lawfare against the Sánchez government faded away. Spain’s paper of record, El País, traditionally aligned with Zapatero’s party PSOE, wrote a stern op-ed saying that the Sánchez government was forced to investigate this properly to prevent the “enemies of democracy” in the Far Right from charging against the democratic system. “Full cooperation with the judiciary, full respect for the presumption of innocence, and all my support for President Zapatero,” Sánchez said today. 

As you may have noticed, authorities have released more evidence this week. Spanish media ranging from the State-owned, left-leaning broadcaster RTVE to the investigative El Confidencial are carving out a map of the Zapatero network of sociedades mercantiles. While not all of these companies are under investigation, together they received an estimated €2.6 million between 2020 and 2025 from Chinese capital and entities under investigation.

The investigation will likely reveal more details about the dealings between the chavista regime, Zapatero and other politicians and businesspeople close to the Sanchista government.

The UDEF report says Zapatero and Martínez were at the center of a structure of businesses and consulting firms (under not-at-all pretentious names like Inteligencia Prospectiva and Análisis Relevante) meant to syphon money coming from China, Venezuela and Spain into his personal accounts. Money that looks, in many cases, like kickbacks. For instance, Whathefav, a social media agency owned by his two daughters, got a payment of half a million euros for creating a website and a promotional video for Inteligencia Prospectiva SL, which is owned by Guillemo and Domingo Amaro Chacón. These two are Spanish-Venezuelan citizens who happen to be the sons of a businessman involved in a case of insurance fraud with PDVSA. Inteligencia Prospectiva reported losses, but was paying juicy bills to other businesses of the same network, like Whathefav.

UDEF  also cites evidence of conversations between Domingo Amaro Chacón and Julio Martínez Martínez, from 2021 to 2024, discussing a deal with Minerven (coded as “comercialización de amarillo”), nickel reserves in Venezuela, a major tourism development project on La Tortuga Island, and what seems like efforts to promote the opening of the UAE embassy in Caracas (coded as “the desert guys”). All of this may have something to do with UDEF’s suggestion (reviewed here by The Objective) alleging that the Plus Ultra case might be linked to a money-laundering operation involving proceeds from the Venezuelan CLAP food-box scheme, as well as the shipment of 5-8 tons of gold from Caracas to Dubai.

Yes, it’s a lot. And we’re not even getting into other grim details, like reports that Whathefav received a €100,000 payment from the company behind VenApp, which you’ll remember as the mobile app Maduro promoted in the past two years to encourage chavistas to snitch on dissidents.

“I told you so…”

Until that day, Zapatero was able to sell to the Spanish people that he had been in Venezuela not just as a negotiator helping take people out of jail, but as a peacemaker trying to prevent the country from falling into a civil war. Apparently through his good heart and blue eyes.

Suddenly, Spain has discovered that a former president, adored among socialists for his term’s achievements like the disbandment of terrorist group ETA, who left Moncloa Palace with no scandals on his shoulders, and who kept enough prestige to back the rise of Sánchez, is an international operator that used his connections and knowledge to make at least 2.6 million euros in ways that spill way beyond the disputable boundaries of legal lobbying.

Once again, Venezuelans raised their eyes to the sky and whispered with resignation. That “yes, moron, we have known this for years” feeling we are so familiar with. 

This case should remind the EU that post-Maduro Venezuela still harbors kleptocratic networks embedded well within European jurisdictions.

For Venezuelan media, and we dare to say a great deal of the public, Zapatero has been known for years as a loyal operator of the chavista regime who works at the expense of the people to help Maduro, and now the Rodríguez siblings, to preserve power. In doing so, he has kept the boardgame tilted against the opposition. The statesmanship that many Spaniards attribute to Zapatero has served only to defend Maduro’s interests during several negotiation rounds with international presence, and to corner the opposition into disadvantageous arrangements by presenting himself as an arbiter when, in fact, he’s no more than an able messenger of Miraflores. Former political prisoners like Lorent Saleh have recalled how Zapatero pressured their families to keep quiet about torture and abuse endured in prison. All that work, of course, has been handsomely rewarded.

We saw his shadow in the humiliation of president-elect Edmundo González Urrutia, in the Spanish ambassador’s house in Caracas, during his last hours in Venezuela in August 2024. Edmundo was pressured by Delcy and Jorge Rodríguez to sign a self-incriminating letter as a condition for being allowed to leave for Spain. After that, the Rodríguez siblings and Zapatero have actively endorsed each other: one of the Spaniard’s last visits to Caracas saw him declaring next to Jorge and other National Assembly lawmakers as a key international sponsor of the 2026 amnesty law, which Delcy recently discontinued. One of those lawmakers, fake opposition politician Timoteo Zambrano, is another close friend and ally of Zapatero. The latter’s influence looks so significant that Delcy just appointed Zambrano as the Venezuelan ambassador in Madrid.

Bad for Delcy, good for María Corina

The investigation will likely reveal more details about the dealings between the chavista regime, Zapatero and other politicians and businesspeople close to the Sanchista government. It will all depend on what prosecutors can find and prove, but it’s fair to say that a wave of scandals and a thickening of corruption dossiers of this kind could make any democratic government in the world collapse (though with Sánchez, in the end, we’re talking about a man Spanish voters know for surviving all kinds of reputational crises). 

The Spanish government was among the first to recognize Delcy Rodríguez as head of state. As early as January, its top diplomat said he would request that the EU lifts sanctions on Delcy. Just a few weeks ago, the same official confirmed that Caracas would resume talks with the IMF. The Spanish Foreign Ministry used to be run by Josep Borrell, a socialist from the non-Zapaterista faction (the more moderate, Felipista wing) of the ruling PSOE, who has become a vocal critic of both the Maduro dictatorship and Zapatero. But Madrid’s latest efforts to normalize relations with Delcy haven’t gone unnoticed, perhaps encouraged by the Trump administration, and also by Maria Corina Machado’s close ties with the Spanish Right.

With such accusations against a key enabler of this bilateral relationship, the image of normalcy (and common sense) both Sánchez and Delcy are trying to project should take a hit. This case should remind the EU that post-Maduro Venezuela still harbors kleptocratic networks embedded well within European jurisdictions.

We should note this is not a problem where Delcy can turn to the Trump administration for help. Not only because Trump despises Sánchez, but because Homeland Security reportedly gave leads to Spain’s National Police in the Plus Ultra case, in cooperation through the American embassy in Madrid.

A big winner in this case is María Corina Machado, who recently held a massive rally in Madrid’s main square that few Spanish politicians could have matched. Machado was lambasted by Foreign Minister José Luis Albares for refusing to meet Sánchez or other leftwing leaders during her Madrid visit. Throughout her trip, when asked by journalists about this decision, Machado did not name Sánchez but thanked the Spanish government for receiving Venezuelan migrants over the years, while also stressing her utmost respect for Spanish institutions. It is false that Machado only met with the right-wing opposition: she appeared publicly with former PM Felipe González, a historic figure of Spanish social democracy and a key leader of the country’s famous Transition.

Machado may now be feeling some relief about how the whole Spanish saga is unfolding (both Zapatero and Machado have acknowledged they have never spoken to each other).

In another era, she might have summed it up with one of her classic phrases: se los dije.