Madrid and Andalusia Authorities Transferred €192,000 to Companies Linked to Zapatero’s Associate. The tax agency recorded transfers of public funds to firms connected with Julio Martínez Martínez. The payers include the governments of Madrid and Andalusia. So far, there have been no official explanations for some of the payments.
A new financial scandal is brewing in Spain: according to a report by the Oficina Nacional de Investigación del Fraude (ONIF), the governments of Madrid and Andalusia transferred at least €192,000 to companies linked to Julio Martínez Martínez, whom police call a friend and alleged confidant of former prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. The ONIF document was included in the case file, which has been informally dubbed the "Zapatero case."
According to the report, just in 2023 and 2024, Madrid government structures transferred €129,189.88 to firms owned by Julio Martínez Martínez. Of this amount, €96,753.02 was paid in 2023 and another €32,436.66 in 2024. In addition, a separate payment of €50,106.48 was made in 2023 by the autonomous agency Boletín Oficial de la Comunidad de Madrid.
Among the clients of companies controlled by Martínez Martínez was also the Junta de Andalucía, led by Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla. From 2020 to 2024, €62,307.12 was allocated from the Andalusian budget. Andalusian authorities stated that these payments are related to the agricultural support program — Política Agraria Común (PAC) — and were directed to Agropecuaria Lucena, one of Julio Martínez Martínez's firms. According to them, the company is one of about 300,000 recipients of such subsidies.
At the same time, the government of Madrid has yet to clarify the grounds for transferring funds to companies linked to Martínez Martínez. Questions of transparency and proper use of budget funds remain open, especially as recent years in Spain have seen a rise in investigations related to government contracts and the allocation of subsidies.
It is worth noting in context that the country continues to closely monitor financial operations and the ties between business and government. For example, police recently found a large amount of cash in the possession of a businessman from Alicante, which also raised questions about the origin of the funds and the transparency of financial flows — you can read more about this in the article about the discovery of 286,000 euros with a businessman from Alicante.
For reference: the Oficina Nacional de Investigación del Fraude (ONIF) is a division of the Agencia Tributaria that investigates tax violations and financial abuses. The Política Agraria Común (PAC) program is a key instrument supporting agriculture in EU countries, distributing billions of euros annually among agricultural enterprises. In Spain, the transparency of these allocations is regularly subject to public and parliamentary scrutiny.
