Spain’s right-wing Vox party has announced it will file a criminal complaint against former prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero over alleged tax fraud and smuggling linked to jewellery valued at more than €1.3 million.
Vox secretary general Ignacio Garriga said on June 15 the party would lodge the complaint as part of its campaign to bring down the government of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez. He made the announcement in an interview on Spanish public radio broadcaster RNE.
The move follows the discovery of a cache of jewels in a safe at Zapatero’s Madrid office, found during a search on May 19. A preliminary valuation put their worth at €1,323,915, with no documentation establishing their origin.
On June 12, a judge at the Audiencia Nacional, Spain’s National Court, opened a separate strand of the long-running Plus Ultra case to investigate Zapatero for possible offences against the public treasury and smuggling.
Judge José Luis Calama argued that the absence of customs paperwork or tax payment pointed to a defrauded sum above the €120,000 threshold that makes tax evasion a criminal offence. Zapatero, who led Spain between 2004 and 2011, is due to testify on June 17 and 18.
Garriga described the Sánchez administration as “a mafia that has taken over every institution” and said the planned complaint was one more step in Vox’s effort to remove what he called a criminal operation.
He urged the People’s Party (PP), the main opposition force, to do everything in its power to end the government, repeating Vox’s call for its leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, to table a motion of no confidence in Congress.
Garriga ruled out leaning on the conservatives through regional channels, though. Vox is negotiating with the PP in Andalusia and props up its administrations in Castile and León, Extremadura and Aragón.
Pressing the matter at regional level, he said, would distort the wider need for a change of policy.
Zapatero, an elder statesman of the Spanish left and a frequent envoy on Latin American affairs, was already under investigation in the Plus Ultra case over the State rescue of an airline with Venezuelan links.
The case marks the first time a former Spanish prime minister has faced criminal investigation, adding to the pressure on Sánchez as his Socialist-led coalition contends with a widening set of corruption inquiries.
