Overview
- Vice‑president Bartolomé Lora declared as an investigado before Judge José María Escribano on Friday and acknowledged meetings with SEPI staff, Economy Ministry officials and Globalia in June–July 2020.
- The judge opened preliminary proceedings after complaints from PP, Vox and a union and has requested all SEPI documents related to the loan, including meeting minutes, emails, drafts, contracts, lists of officials and files on EU supervision.
- Investigators are focusing on procedural questions: the rescue was processed in roughly 70 days according to the Tribunal de Cuentas, the aid was split into two tranches near €240m and €235m, and the beneficiary and tax‑debt situation raise eligibility concerns.
- Lora told the court the pre‑rescue meetings supplied information that sped up the process and denied wrongdoing, and he is currently the only person publicly reported as formally investigated in this procedure.
- The probe could widen if documents show officials bypassed legal steps or reinterpreted rules, and it will test how Spanish agencies handled state aid and whether the structuring of the loans avoided required European Commission oversight.