This was stated by Muñoz in an interview with Antena 3 reported by Servimedia, after Zapatero’s defense rejected the €1.3 million valuation attributed to the jewelry found in his office and asked the judge, if he did not consider his explanation sufficient, to request confirmation from Saudi Arabia that they were a personal gift from King Abdullah during his official visit to Spain in 2007.
In this regard, Muñoz said that Zapatero “has been lying all these months” and recalled that his “unofficial spokesman,” Luis Arroyo, said that the jewelry “was not a gift from the king of Saudi Arabia,” but “now he says it was.” They also pledged to “cooperate with the Justice system,” but “we have been waiting for three months and he has been unable to prove it,” she added.
In her view, “in the end, it is all a procedural ploy.” “It is clear that our judicial system offers many safeguards and that Zapatero’s defense wants to take advantage of them to try to evade what happened. No one in this country believes King Abdullah gave him the jewelry,” she said.
“IN-KIND PAYMENT”
Regarding this, she pointed out that “during that trip he gave him other jewelry that he did document,” and therefore asked “why he did not document these.” Muñoz also accused former Prime Minister Zapatero of trying to make “a person who is dead and can no longer defend himself say whether or not he gave it to him.”
For Muñoz, what is “clear” is that “the hypotheses being considered by the UDEF and the judge himself are that this is an in-kind payment for the work Zapatero did for Venezuela.” The problem is that he “would rather have it appear that he was given some jewelry and failed to declare it than face the other possibility, which is much more dangerous and has not become time-barred.”
“We will see what comes of all this,” she said. She also denounced the fact that, when asked about the issue, the government said it was “the same as if the president of Cantabria gave you some sobaos pasiegos.” “This is the Government of Spain; it is treating people as if they were idiots,” she concluded.
