Zapatero seeks to annul police report on Bolivia before the National Court
Former president Zapatero appeals to the National Court to exclude a UDEF report on his mediation in Bolivia and alleged receipt of €200,000.
Zapatero appeals to the National Court to exclude UDEF report on Bolivia
Former Government president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero has filed an appeal before the Criminal Division of the National Court requesting the withdrawal of a report drawn up by the Economic and Fiscal Crime Unit (UDEF) of the National Police from the judicial proceedings. According to eldebate.com, the document—to which the Efe news agency had access on Monday—challenges the previous refusal by judge José Luis Calama to reconsider his decision on that investigation.
Zapatero is being investigated for alleged influence peddling in favour of the airline Plus Ultra. The suspicions pointed out in the questioned report centre on his mediation with the Government of Bolivia and the possible receipt of €200,000 for influencing the authorities of that country in favour of a business group. The former president argues that these indications stem from information obtained in searches carried out within the case but which fell outside the judicially authorised perimeter.
In his view, a police unit carrying out a "massive data dump" of intercepted information and analysing it "in any manner and without any perimeter" constitutes a "prohibited 'inquisitio generalis'". "The person being investigated who has suffered the consequences of that mass seizure will face a general investigation, extending as far temporally as the data reaches," the appeal states.
The document details that the UDEF, without express judicial authorisation, used financial intelligence information on Zapatero's personal and professional activity and exhaustively analysed the movements in his Banco Santander account. Specifically, the report records 174 transfers from eleven different payers, corresponding to a five-year period.
The defence emphasises that the vast majority of those movements had no relation to the company Análisis Relevante nor to Julio Martínez—the initial subject of the investigation—but rather corresponded to "income from other activities in relation to which no criminal indications are reflected". Among them are the amounts received from the entity Focus Social, linked precisely to Bolivia.
The appeal concludes that "the inclusion of all that information appears to be aimed at opening future lines of investigation into other activities of Mr Rodríguez Zapatero previously not questioned" and that "there has been an illegitimate intrusion into privacy that has resulted in a general investigation into the life of the person being investigated".
For all these reasons, Zapatero requests that the UDEF report concerning the Focus Social Research transfers be excluded from the proceedings, as it stems from a general investigation not authorised by the court and constitutes, in his view, "a prospective enquiry" into a professional activity in respect of which there was no "prior suspicion whatsoever".
Source: Google News BO — Crime