The airline Plus Ultra is affected by investigations by Spain’s Anti-Corruption Prosecutor, which alleges it used COVID-19 pandemic rescue funds to launder embezzled money from Venezuela. Photo: Plus Ultra.
Guacamaya, December 12, 2025. The Spanish Anti-Corruption Prosecutor is investigating whether the airline Plus Ultra diverted part of the bailout it received from the government of Pedro Sánchez during the pandemic, allegedly to launder funds embezzled from the CLAP food program and from gold sales by the Central Bank of Venezuela.
The Economic and Fiscal Crime Unit (UDEF) of the Spanish National Police has already arrested three people by court order: Julio Martínez Sola, president of Plus Ultra; Roberto Roselli, the airline’s CEO; and later also Julio Martínez Martínez, a Spanish businessman with interests in Venezuela.
The Anti-Corruption complaint alleges that Plus Ultra misused the €53 million rescue package by transferring these funds to a “criminal organization” that is also under investigation in France and Switzerland.
Plus Ultra is a small commercial airline that has primarily flown to destinations within the former Spanish empire. Today its destinations include Malabo, Madrid, Tenerife, Buenos Aires, Cartagena de Indias, Lima, and Caracas. It has formed alliances with StarPerú, Cubana de Aviación, and the Venezuelan airline LASER Airlines.
In March 2021, due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on aviation, the Spanish Government granted a €53 million loan to Plus Ultra, considering it a “strategic and viable” company. The rescue was challenged in court by the pseudo-union Manos Limpias in 2023, although in 2023 Judge Esperanza Collazos closed the case due to a “lack of evidence and no crime being established.”
The former Minister of Development (2018-2020) and Transport (2020-2021) José Luis Ábalos, currently in prison for corruption crimes, states that he never agreed with the rescue and that behind it would be former President José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, who denies this accusation.
The former president of Plus Ultra, Fernando García Manso, has defended in press statements that the Government’s rescue was “the minimum necessary” and denied that his airline used any former high-ranking official of the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) to obtain it.
Embezzlement Through Fake Loan Repayments
According to the Prosecutor’s Office, the airline allegedly simulated the repayment of “loans with three companies of the criminal organization, involved in gold sales,” to launder opaque income from Venezuela. These funds would come from embezzlement of the CLAP food distribution program and from sales of the country’s gold reserves.
Anti-Corruption explained that “The company Plus Ultra appears as the signatory and beneficiary of alleged loan contracts with three companies of the criminal organization, involved in gold sales, and these contracts provide cover, in turn, for the corresponding repayments by the Spanish company Plus Ultra, on dates consecutive to the reception of the public aid, to accounts abroad of companies that are part of the criminal organization.”
The complaint points to the actions of several individuals to receive money from abroad to acquire real estate and subscribe loan contracts to Plus Ultra, which were fully repaid.
It also mentions the sale of gold worth €30 million to a company in the United Arab Emirates by the firm that granted the loans, and then the transfer of funds to another company with an account in Panama. Furthermore, the money laundering activities may have used the sale of luxury watches.
Spain-Venezuela Corruption: Crossing Party Lines
Since the beginning of the “Koldo case” in Spain, multiple anti-corruption investigations with connections to Venezuela have been initiated. Former minister José Luis Ábalos and his associates could be involved in bribery and embezzlement cases simultaneously related to the government of Nicolás Maduro and the “Interim Government” of Juan Guaidó.
First, in 2020, a meeting between Ábalos and Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez at Barajas airport was revealed. The meeting was controversial due to the Venezuelan official’s ban from entering the Schengen Area. However, both the Supreme Court and the Provincial Court of Madrid dismissed the case in 2020 and 2021, finding no signs of a crime. In October 2024, the Central Operative Unit of the Civil Guard maintained that the reason for the meeting was the handover of 104 gold bars, valued at $68.5 million.
This year, approaches and bribery offers in 2019 between the “Interim Government” and Ábalos have also been revealed. According to a leaked recording of a conversation between the former minister and his chief of staff, Koldo García, representatives of Juan Guaidó allegedly offered them €500,000 per month for three years to secure meetings with President Pedro Sánchez.
In a letter from Ábalos to Guaidó, the former minister said he made available to his entity “all public companies and those of internationally recognized prestige that may be needed, as well as private companies” that, from the Spanish Government, could be recommended. Businessman Víctor de Aldama would serve as a liaison for his contacts, according to the same letter.
