MADRID, June 13 -- The jewels were in a safe. More than a hundred pieces, a court says, together worth over 1.3 million euros, found by police in the Madrid office of a man who once governed Spain. On Friday a judge opened a fresh criminal investigation into how they got there, and into why no tax appears to have been paid on them.

The National Court judge Jose Luis Calama opened the inquiry into former prime minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero for suspected tax fraud and smuggling, after agents found roughly 100 items of jewellery, valued by a court appraisal Euronews reported at 1,323,915 euros, during a May search of his office. The origin of the pieces was not currently justified, the judge wrote, and the absence of any tax documen...