Investigation into alleged irregular financing of the PSOE links Zapatero, Venezuela and corruption cases

As the secret investigation into the alleged irregular financing of the PSOE progresses, suspicions increase that the different causes of corruption that affect the Government, the Socialist Party and former president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero are pieces of the same puzzle that are beginning to fit together.

In this puzzle that the judge of the National Court Ismael Moreno, the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office and the UCO are trying to decipher there is a particularly striking element in the eyes of the researchers: how the influence of former president Zapatero on Pedro Sánchez was accompanied by the Government's lurches in foreign policy with respect to Venezuela and the real possibility that the hidden counterpart was the irregular financing of the PSOE.

Currently, Judge Moreno is investigating two avenues of alleged opaque financing in Ferraz, as EL MUNDO has been able to verify through different sources in the case. On the one hand, what researchers call smurfing, that is, the alleged illegal commissions paid by builders that would have been camouflaged by the Socialist Party as donations and, on the other, the Venezuelan financing route, through oil quotas.

In this context, there are pieces of the puzzle that begin to repeat themselves in different summaries. For example, this occurs with the company Apamate, one of the signatory parties of the fictitious contract of 15 million euros linked to the financing of the PSOE and also to former president Zapatero. This company, Apamate Corporate and Trust, S.L., was controlled by Venezuelan businessman Francisco Flores, a close friend of the former leader of the PSOE.

In addition, Apamate was a client of Analysis Relevant, the company that the National Court suspects was created to camouflage the illegal commissions that former President Zapatero allegedly collected, derived from the influence peddling that he would have deployed internationally.

Not in vain, the Udef seized a contract, dated July 30, 2020, which included fees of 120,000 euros and in which the most striking thing was that the small print of the contract was "identical" to the one signed between Analisis Relevante and Plus Ultra. The "scope of services" included the "delivery of a monthly report on the relevant keys to the political, economic and social situation in the world (...), ongoing advice on different countries and international organizations, as well as on their specific policies (...), ongoing advice on matters related to the preparation of speeches and presentations."

But the coincidences don't end here. The suspicion is that Ábalos's fall from grace for Sánchez was accompanied by Zapatero's empowerment within the Government. Today this newspaper reveals how the businessman Víctor de Aldama informed the former vice president of Venezuela Delcy Rodríguez, in a message dated October 2021, that "Z's relationship with the 1 is much better than before", in reference to Sánchez, whom his subordinates called "the one" or "the one."

Furthermore, the puzzle continues to take shape regarding another former Secretary of Organization of the PSOE, Santos Cerdán, also accused of corruption. As this media has learned, Cerdán's documentation that is currently being analyzed by the UCO reinforces the evidence regarding the collection of irregular commissions by someone who was also President Pedro Sánchez's right-hand man. The pieces of the puzzle point, once again, to what part of those commissions would have ended up in Ferraz's accounts.