The judge rejects Zapatero's challenge against the Yanes jewelry store in the Plus Ultra case

Judge José Luis Calama, instructor of the Plus Ultra case at the National Court, has rejected José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero's request to recuse the Yanes jewelry store, chosen to prepare a second expert report on the pieces seized in the search of the office of the former president of the Government - already valued by the Ansorena house at 1.3 million euros. Through a resolution issued this Tuesday, the judge argues that none of the causes provided for in the law to remove said company are proven; and adds that the defense is simply “limited to invoking an alleged lack of impartiality” on the part of the firm due to statements made by its general director in the press.

The lawyer of the former socialist president, Víctor Moreno Catena, asked Calama last week to leave this jewelry store out of the case because Juan Yanes, who is listed as general director of the company, had already spoken in a La Sexta program about the intervened group and, therefore, that company is contaminated to carry out the required analysis. As the lawyer explained, he had stated that there are “four or six pieces of apparently incalculable value” and estimated that the set could be worth “a couple of million” euros.

“He has publicly expressed his opinion on the most relevant and less technical aspects of the expert opinion that has been entrusted to Joyería Yanes: the replacement value and the joint value of the intervened lot,” Zapatero's lawyer stressed. The defense insisted that these statements by the general director of the jewelry store show an “improper positioning of the firm in the result of the expertise”—a key piece of evidence, since the estimated value can mark the existence or not of a crime—and that it contaminates the entire company: “The experts who finally intervene in the expert opinion—on behalf of the firm—will hardly be able to separate themselves from the assessment made on television by the owner and general director of the brand, given the reputational damage that this would generate the company.”