The Donald Trump Administration proposed this Thursday to block the accounts of the Swiss bank MBaer in the United States for its alleged involvement in money laundering operations linked to the regimes of Venezuela, Russia and Iran. Among the operations that the Financial Crimes Control Agency of the United States Government accuses of MBaer bank, a small financial institution created in 2018 and based in Zürich, two accounts are cited in the name of the Swiss investor at the origin of the investigation for the rescue of Plus Ultra, the Venezuelan capital airline that in 2021 received loans worth 53 million euros from the Spanish Government.
The suspicions of the United States focus above all on the various corruption plots orchestrated around the state oil company Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), “looted for decades,” according to the official note, and which involved losses of millions of dollars. “The schemes included bribery, money laundering and unfair administration, which gave rise to US and international investigations around the year MBaer was founded,” the document states.
The alleged looters would have tried to launder most of these funds through European banks, and in particular MBaer. Among those who benefited from the Swiss bank’s tolerance are Alex Saab, the alleged front man of the former Venezuelan president currently detained in New York, Nicolás Maduro; Alessandro Bazzoni, sanctioned by the United States and at that time a minority shareholder of MBaer, and the businessman José Luis Chávez Calva.
The link with the investigation into the rescue of Plus Ultra, however, refers to the Swiss investor of Dutch origin, who although not expressly cited, does appear referenced by the Spanish press reports on which it is based and who since 2021 has been linked to the Maduro regime. “In early 2025, he was allegedly being investigated by Swiss and French authorities for laundering the proceeds of funds embezzled by Venezuelan public officials, among other means, through the airline Plus Ultra Líneas Aéreas SA,” the sanction proposal states.
According to the Treasury proposal, “one of the Swiss investor’s two MBaer accounts received more than $519,000 (currently €440,000) in 2021 from Plus Ultra”, the year in which Pedro Sánchez’s Government authorized a bailout worth €53 million. “And (given) that that same account paid a salary to a person who was later identified as facilitating the laundering, the Financial Crimes Control Agency considers that it is likely that the account was used to launder funds from Venezuelan public corruption.”
The judicial investigation in Spain, which this week has become the responsibility of the National Court, remains secret, but the main suspicion centers on the Government’s rescue of the Plus Ultra company and whether this was, in fact, used to launder Venezuelan funds. In the midst of rescue negotiations and with the company on the brink of bankruptcy, Plus Ultra turned to said Swiss investor, Simon Leendert, to provide a series of loans for just over one million euros that were later repaid with the rescue money.
The company assures that everything was legal, that the money was transferred with electricity and stenographers through Spanish banks, in addition to the fact that it had been declared to the SEPI that this would be done. But both the French and Swiss Prosecutor’s Offices have sent requests for collaboration to the Spanish Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office in response to doubts about these operations.
Within the framework of this investigation, the Economic and Fiscal Crime Unit (UDEF) arrested the president of the airline, Julio Martínez Sola, its CEO, Roberto Roseli, and an Alicante businessman with business and friendship ties with the former Spanish president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, Julio Martínez Martínez. Both Julio Martínez and Roseli spent 48 hours in the cells and were released. The investigation remains secret, now in the hands of the National Court.
