Ruiz-Mateos avoids court for fifth time

Disgraced Spanish businessman José María Ruiz-Mateos managed to avoid appearing in court for the fifth time in a year on Thursday. The 81-year-old had been summoned by a judge in Palma de Mallorca, where he was due to give evidence as a suspect in a case of alleged fraud.

The founder of failed conglomerate Nueva Rumasa was arrested on Wednesday in his house in Somosaguas in Madrid in order to guarantee his appearance in the Palma court. But, at 11pm the same day, the judge ordered that Ruiz-Mateos be released from custody, “for humanitarian reasons and given his advanced age.”

His lawyer, Marcos García Montes, traveled to Mallorca the next day and announced that his client would not be appearing in court given that he was “indisposed.” Among other reasons for his non-appearance, the lawyer cited the 12 hours that Ruiz-Mateos had been kept locked up in Pozuelo de Alarcón in Madrid.

Ruiz-Mateos and his six sons have been implicated in a fraud case involving the non-payment of 13.9 million euros for a hotel complex in 2006. They have been banned from leaving the country without the permission of the courts.

Nueva Rumasa was meant to represent the comeback of Ruiz-Mateos, a popular if controversial figure who established an earlier business empire in the 1960s called Rumasa. That holding, which comprised over 700 companies, was expropriated by the government in 1983.