Zapatero moves to nullify core evidence in Plus Ultra probe, questioning US phone seizure and lawyer's hard drive
The former Spanish prime minister's defense argues that a hard drive and a US-seized phone were analysed without proper judicial oversight, threatening to collapse the probe into the €53m airline bailout.
The ‘Crucial’ hard drive
José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero’s legal team has filed a request demanding that Judge José Luis Calama ask the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office to identify the judicial order that authorised analysis of a hard drive, labelled ‘Crucial’, seized from lawyer Miguel Palomero. The device was confiscated during searches on 24 October 2024, carried out under a French European Investigation Order and a Swiss letter rogatory. The defence states it has found no grounded resolution that explicitly allowed prosecutors or the UDEF police unit to inspect the drive, which contained WhatsApp conversations and other documents.
If there was no judicial authorisation, the essential guarantees of the procedure are radically undermined, violating the fundamental rights to secrecy of communications, privacy and personal data protection.
Because of this, Zapatero’s lawyers insist the “lack of essential guarantees” means the content of that device, and particularly the WhatsApp exchanges analysed, must be excluded from the proceedings. They warn they will promote an incident of nullity if no enabling judicial resolution exists.
The US-provided phone
The second front concerns the mobile phone of Rodolfo Reyes, the former principal shareholder of Plus Ultra. US Homeland Security Investigations seized the device at a Florida airport in 2021, but only sent its content to Spanish police in March 2026. Judge Calama has already asked Washington to authorise using the messages as trial evidence. Zapatero’s defence, however, appealed the judge’s decision not to expand that rogatory commission to demand details about how the phone was seized, copied, preserved and transferred – including whether HSI had its own judicial warrant.
The courts are constitutionally obliged to exercise effective control over the lawfulness of all information added to the case.
The defence argues that without establishing the chain of custody and the conditions of the seizure, foreign evidence “with rules and guarantees foreign to those required by our legal system” cannot be admitted.
- Spanish government grants €53m bailout to airline Plus Ultra during the pandemic.
- US Homeland Security Investigations seizes mobile phone of Rodolfo Reyes, Plus Ultra’s former owner, at a Florida airport.
- Police searches in Spain, authorised under French and Swiss cooperation requests, lead to seizure of the ‘Crucial’ hard drive from lawyer Miguel Palomero.
- US authorities send the contents of Reyes’s phone to Spanish police.
- Judge Calama orders a search of Zapatero’s office, following leads from the analysed devices.
- Zapatero testifies before Judge Calama as a formally investigated person.
- Zapatero’s defence files two challenges questioning the legality of the hard drive and phone evidence.
Building a nullity strategy
The two moves are part of a broader defence strategy aimed at attacking the procedural origins of the case. The ‘Crucial’ hard drive first brought Zapatero’s name into the investigation through chats between Palomero and Venezuelan businessman Danilo Diazgranados, who allegedly paid a firm owned by Zapatero’s daughters. If the evidence stream is declared unlawful, everything derived from it – including the May 2026 search of the former prime minister’s office and his subsequent questioning – could be invalidated.
The defence frames the request for the authorising resolution as “not a mere formality but an autonomous and unavoidable legal requirement” that “directly and immediately affects” Zapatero’s procedural standing and his right to a fair trial.
Judge’s stance
Judge Calama, sitting at Spain’s National Court, has so far rejected the request to broaden the query to the United States, arguing that the rogatory commission should not be extended until Washington responds to the initial request. Zapatero has lodged a “recurso de reforma” against that ruling, insisting that the information is needed before the evidence can be considered usable.
