Plus Ultra Airline Probed for Alleged Ties to Venezuela Money-Laundering Network

Spanish prosecutors are investigating whether Madrid-based airline Plus Ultra used a €53-million Covid-era bailout to launder money embezzled from Venezuela through a web of companies in France, Switzerland and Spain, according to a report in El País.

The paper says officers from Spain’s National Police searched the airline’s headquarters on Thursday and arrested its president, Julio Martínez, and chief executive, Roberto Roselli, as part of a wider money-laundering probe. The case is under judicial seal, and the names of other suspects have not yet been made public, El País reported.

Plus Ultra received the €53 million injection in March 2021 after Spain’s government classified the small long-haul airline as “strategic” in the wake of the pandemic, according to El País.

Anti-corruption prosecutors now suspect the funds were not used to stabilize the company, but instead to pay off loans from entities that investigators describe as belonging to a criminal organization.

The documentation reviewed by the organization states that “Plus Ultra appears as a signatory and beneficiary of loan agreements with three companies belonging to the criminal organization and involved in sales of gold.” Prosecutors believe “the real purpose [of the debt repayments] was to launder illicit income,” according to the report.

The complaint also suggests that the sale of luxury watches may have been used as an additional channel for laundering funds.

The investigation is focused on a group that prosecutors describe as a criminal organization made up of three Peruvian nationals, two Venezuelans, a Dutch citizen and at least one Spanish lawyer, El País said.

According to the newspaper, prosecutors say the network laundered money that originated in embezzlement by Venezuelan public officials. The illicit funds allegedly came from two main sources: CLAP, Venezuela’s state-run food distribution program, and the sale of gold from the country’s central bank.

The organization’s operations in Spain were “so extensive” that, shortly after Plus Ultra received the state aid, the airline allegedly diverted money to overseas bank accounts belonging to companies in the network, El País reported, citing the prosecution’s complaint.

The Spanish case grew out of earlier investigations abroad. El País says the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office received two mutual legal assistance requests in 2024 from France’s Parquet National Financier and the Geneva Public Prosecutor’s Office in Switzerland.

Those authorities were already probing a Venezuelan-linked money-laundering scheme and sought Spain’s help to search several properties in Madrid, Pozuelo, Tenerife and Mallorca. Their requests pointed to Spain as another hub in the alleged operation, prompting Spanish prosecutors to open their own case.

The original investigation had focused on whether Plus Ultra was truly eligible for state aid and whether some of the money ultimately ended up with Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, PDVSA. Court-appointed experts concluded that the carrier had shown signs of insolvency since 2019, which would in principle have disqualified it from receiving the bailout, according to El País.

Prosecutors now believe the network used a series of shell companies not only to lend money to Plus Ultra but also to buy property and move funds through the international financial system, El País reported.