The former basketball player turned financial guru, Aitor Zárate, 58, is “on the road again,” as he announces in the promotional video for his latest book, The Rezia methodwith which he promises to “transform your idea into money.” Published last March by Deusto, the label that translates influential global thinkers such as Jonathan Haidt or Francis Fukuyama into Spanish and also publishes self-help texts, Zárate’s seventh book is another manual on how to get rich. And it serves as a gateway to other “special projects” where you can make “money dance for you.” The previous books by this former ACB player, with which he attracted savers towards similar projects, have ended up being reviewed in at least two lawsuits that could put him in the dock, this time as the accused.
Elite athlete retired from the fields in 1994, after playing for teams such as Baskonia, Ourense, Granada and Zaragoza, ten years later Aitor González de Zárate Apiñániz began to emerge as a guru of stock market investments online (trading). Between 2005 and 2011, he published six books, some of them cataloged as best sellers and published by important publishers, such as Espasa. To his literary work, Aitor Zárate added credit for his courses and conferences in business centers, such as the Center for Financial Studies, and interviews in numerous media outlets, including a digital one in this newspaper.
Several of his most faithful readers at the time, who trusted his verb as a financial wizard, are now demanding in court hundreds of thousands of euros that he borrowed for various projects, including a company based in a tax haven, and never returned. For six years, he has been prosecuted (the term by which a “defendant” is now judicially called) in two courts for alleged fraud, which in its aggravated form could mean up to eight years in prison. In both cases, in Vitoria and Gandía, the investigation is awaiting the final proceedings before deciding whether to open a trial.
The two complaints were filed in 2018 and 2019. In which a Court of Vitoria (Basque Country) investigates, where Zárate was born and developed part of his sports career and then an investor, it describes how literary fame prestige his public image of efficiency and seriousness. And the close link established between its readers and fundraising is cited. One of the complainants, for example, appeared by his first name in Wake up and make money from the crisis (2009), and with the nickname with which Zárate used to refer to him, “my favorite Extremaduran”, in The simplicity of the first million (2011), the best seller to whom the promotional campaign of his new publishing house refers.
When asked by this newspaper, the editor of Deusto has declined to make any comment. Zárate, contacted on Wednesday through his lawyer and this Thursday by email, has not responded. According to his lawyer, two other cases were closed. As in those works that appeared in the years of the real estate bubble and the subsequent economic crisis, Zárate’s new book is a gateway to other platforms. The new one is called This!is aimed particularly at those under 45 years of age, and it introduces: “I am Aitor Zárate and this is ‘Rich or nothing’. The latter, The rich or nothingis also the title of the next book that Deusto plans to publish by Zárate, although it has not yet delivered the manuscript, according to the publisher.
The example of that reader from Extremadura, who asks not to be named in this information and whose case the complaint describes as “the most bloody,” is not the only one. Another of the plaintiffs from Vitoria invested 283,000 euros in another of Zárate’s projects, The K factor (by knowledgeknowledge in English), seduced by his image as a successful author and investor.
Not all those affected during those years have filed complaints. But they have not forgotten their way of operating either. Pedro E. Carrión, an agricultural technician in Murcia, had also read Zárate’s first six books when he attended one of his investment courses in a hotel in Vitoria that he taught at a rate of “3,500 euros” per course. More than 4,000 students had enrolled in one of its courses or “camps” until 2011, according to a biography from that year, On the road with Aitor Zárate.
Convinced of the operations that the “investment guru” described, Carrión transferred 150,000 euros to a Zárate account in Latvia in March 2013. When three years later he began to suspect that it was a scam, Zárate returned 20,000 euros to through a third party, David Sanchís Hidalgo, as reflected in the receipts and contracts to which EL PAÍS has had access. Of the remaining 130,000, he never heard from again. Nor from Zárate.
“For me he is a scoundrel and a professional scammer. The most professional there is in this country,” says Carrión about Zárate, whom he never managed to see again since he signed a debt recognition contract in 2016 in San Juan de Luz, in the French Basque Country. Carrión says by phone that he renounced the judicial process convinced that it would only entail new expenses and that they would not help him recover his money. Zárate had signed a promise of 78% accumulated profitability in six years, according to the contract.
In a court in Gandía (Valencia), a second complaint claims the 100,000 euros that a woman transferred to Funky 9, one of Zárate’s companies, in Latvia, from which they were later transferred to another without leaving a trace. The Funky 9 company is domiciled in Belize, a tax haven, according to the judicial investigation, and the court is waiting for Belize to respond to a rogatory commission to close the investigation and decide whether to open an oral trial against Zárate. Along with him, the complaint is also directed against David Sanchís. The prosecutor has opposed the dismissal of the case on seven occasions.
In both Vitoria and Gandía, Zárate “excuses himself”, according to an order from the Provincial Court of Valencia, that in 2014 he donated his companies to David Sanchís, free of charge, and that Sanchís is ultimately responsible for not having returned the money. However, the contract signed in San Juan de Luz, among other indications, reveals that two years later Zárate was still acting on behalf of at least one of his business projects, Funky 9. According to said Court, neither Zárate nor Sanchís “give an explanation nor do they provide any element related to the situation of (said) company.”
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