Judge José Luis Calama will investigate whether Social Security certified that Plus Ultra had no overdue debts, in a case that includes a meeting between Zapatero and Escrivá in 2020.
Judge José Luis Calama of the National Court will investigate whether Social Security confirmed that the airline Plus Ultra had no overdue debts, following a meeting between former Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and then Minister José Luis Escrivá, now Governor of the Bank of Spain. This is stated in an order dated 15 October that has been accessed by El Periódico Extremadura.
The magistrate accepts the inhibition agreed upon by the head of the Investigating Court 22 of Madrid, who had admitted the complaint from the union Manos Limpias for documentary falsification and prevarication. The complaint is directed against Rodrigo Mares Rodríguez, provincial director of the General Treasury of Social Security, José Luis Encinas Prado, deputy general director, and Belén Fruiters Casado, head of the section of the Treasury of Madrid.
The complaint is based on documentation from the Plus Ultra case that was already part of the proceedings before reaching Judge Calama, including an expert report commissioned by the instructor, Magistrate Esperanza Collazos.
Among those documents is a certificate from the General Treasury of Social Security dated 20 August 2020, signed by Encinas and endorsed by Fruiters. According to the expert report, the document replaces the word "certifies" with a formula that confirms the absence of pending claims for overdue debts, and the expert argues that this wording is not valid before the Administration:
it does not certify the non-existence of overdue debts pending payment
Manos Limpias cross-references this report with another from the UDEF, which claims that, allegedly, to lift the ban on Plus Ultra so it could access the rescue, a meeting took place between Zapatero and Escrivá, then Minister of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration.
According to the indictment order against former President Zapatero, he met with Escrivá on 7 September 2020, while Plus Ultra was negotiating its debt with Social Security. The airline needed to resolve this issue, as one of the conditions to qualify for the 53 million euros government rescue was to be up to date with its tax obligations and with Social Security as of 31 December 2019.
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