Xavier León Anchustegui, Venezuelan business associate of Zapatero's front man, arrested in PDVSA-Crypto case
The former vice president of BANDES signed a contract in 2020 with the offshore company of Spain's former president's principal front man. He was arrested in 2024 for his links to El Aissami's network.
Former vice president of Chavista bank BANDES arrested for links to PDVSA-Crypto case
Xavier León Anchustegui, who in December 2020 signed a contract in Caracas with the offshore company of the principal front man of former Spanish president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, was detained by officials of the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service (SEBIN) in 2024, according to okdiario.com. The arrest took place in the context of the PDVSA-Crypto case, the largest corruption scheme investigated in Venezuela in two decades, which involves the diversion of between 5,550 and 16,900 million dollars from the sale of state oil.
León Anchustegui was detained alongside three other former high-ranking Chavista officials: Oswaldo Pérez Cueva, Juan Santana and Erick Jacinto Pérez Rodríguez, all accused of links to the criminal network headed by Tareck El Aissami and Simón Zerpa.
The contract with Martínez Martínez's offshore company
The agreement that connects León Anchustegui to the Spanish scheme was signed on 18 December 2020 in the Venezuelan capital. The parties are the Bank of Economic and Social Development of Venezuela (BANDES) and Landside Holding Ltd, a company domiciled on the second floor of a building in Tortola, British Virgin Islands. León Anchustegui appears in this document, seized by the Spanish Unit of Economic and Fiscal Crime (UDEF), in his capacity as executive vice president of BANDES. Julio Martínez Martínez—identified by the investigation as Zapatero's principal front man—appears as president of Landside.
The purpose of the contract was the recovery of funds that BANDES had deposited with Noor Capital PSC, a financial management company based in Abu Dhabi, under the terms of a portfolio management agreement signed on 15 September 2017. In exchange, the document guaranteed Martínez—and, if his status as a shell man is proven, also Zapatero—a commission of "8.75% of funds recovered during negotiations", according to the exact wording of the text reviewed by okdiario.com.
The mandate granted Landside Holding "full notarial power to act in its name" and the authority to subcontract "consultants, lawyers or auditors" at its discretion. A confidentiality clause, set out in point eight of the contract, obliged both parties to keep secret "all information disclosed directly or indirectly, in writing or by any other means". This stipulation has not withstood judicial scrutiny.
The PDVSA-Crypto scheme and its defendants
The PDVSA-Crypto case investigates the mechanism by which Venezuela began exchanging oil for cryptocurrencies between 2019 and 2022, a financial architecture designed to circumvent international sanctions imposed on Nicolás Maduro's regime. The Venezuelan prosecutors maintain that "foreign currency produced by crude sales was channelled through crypto-assets and business conducted by 74 commercial companies".
The trial began in April 2026, is being held in camera on the top floor of Caracas's Palace of Justice under strict surveillance, and involves 64 defendants. Tareck El Aissami, former vice president and former Minister of Petroleum, appears in the dock as the alleged mastermind, along with former Finance Minister Simón Zerpa, former deputy Hugbel Roa and former Superintendent of Crypto-Assets Joselit Ramírez, among more than 60 accused in total. The charges include treason, appropriation of public assets, money laundering and criminal association.
Before his arrest, León Anchustegui had accumulated multiple positions in the Chavista administration: vice minister of Economic Coordination at the Ministry of Finance, vice president of BANDES and alternate governor of Venezuela at the World Bank.
The coincidence of dates and the link to Spain
Investigators consider it particularly significant that the mandate between BANDES and Landside was signed two days after the airline Plus Ultra signed a payment agreement with Venezuela's National Institute of Civil Aeronautics (INAC). The hypothesis being pursued is that the Chavista government would have agreed with Plus Ultra on the provision of transport services for sensitive materials, and that Zapatero would have benefited from this operation through structures in tax havens.
The Spanish National Court is investigating whether the public rescue of 53 million euros granted to Plus Ultra in November 2020, from the Fund to Support the Solvency of Strategic Companies, was the result of unlawful intervention by a network of influence led, according to UDEF, by Zapatero himself. The coincidence of dates, of city and of parties involved has led investigators to suggest that both documents are part of the same scheme.
Julio Martínez Martínez was arrested in Spain in December 2025. A search of his home found 300,000 euros in cash which he himself admitted had not been declared to the tax authorities. Judge José Luis Calama has summoned Zapatero to testify as an investigated person in June; Martínez will subsequently appear.
What the contract establishes with clarity is that which until now existed only as a hypothesis in police reports: two people, a date and an agreed percentage. The Venezuelan public money, the shell company based in a tax haven and the agreed commission have ceased to be conjectures and become numbered clauses of an official document. The link between the Venezuelan financial scheme and the Spanish case now has a paper that accredits it, with two names that face problems before the courts.
Source: Google News VE — Crime