The Provincial Court of Madrid has partially upheld the appeals presented by Begoña Gómez’s defense and the Prosecutor’s Office against the investigation carried out by Judge Juan Carlos Peinado in the case against the wife of the President of the Government. Specifically, the judges of Section 23 once again order Peinado to leave out of the proceedings ordered everything related to the rescue of the company Air Europa, in the same way they did in response to the first appeal presented by the Public Ministry against the instruction of the magistrate.
In the order issued today, the Madrid Court rejects the request for an archive made by Gómez’s defense and warns that the investigation “is in a very initial phase, taking into account the complexity of the facts investigated and the difficulty encountered “the investigation of the operations whose discovery is sought.”
On the other hand, the judges reproach the judge for issuing an order saying that he was going to investigate all the activity of the accused since her husband has been President of the Government. The instance higher than Peinado says that the judge made a “generic and imprecise” wording and that, furthermore, it does not comply with what the same judges of the Provincial Court already decided on the limits of the procedure.
The Provincial Court divided the original complaint from Clean Hands into three blocks and concluded that only the contracts of a company owned by Juan Carlos Barrabés – who participated in Gómez’s professorship at the Complutense – presented indications that justified the investigation. That meant then, and the judges reiterate now, leaving the rescue of Air Europa, a Globalia Group company, out of the investigations. In this sense, the judges of the higher instance leave “the facts relating to Globalia out of the investigation as long as truly new facts with incriminating content and assessed in a reasoned judicial resolution do not appear.”
The court understands, as it did in its response to the first appeals, that the investigation must be limited to the relations between Begoña Gómez and the business group of Juan Carlos Barrabés. “The striking variation, quantitative and qualitative, experienced by the relationship between the companies of the Barrabés group and the public administration in temporal proximity to obtaining the Chair [de la Complutense] and take-off of the masters is truly significant,” he says.
Along these lines, the Provincial Court of Madrid refutes the argument that the reports from the Central Operational Unit of the Civil Guard have already concluded that there is no evidence of crime in the awarding of pandemic contracts to a UTE in which a Barrabés company. The magistrates say that the Civil Guard limited itself to saying that it had found no irregularities in the adjudication process. “But this conclusion – they add – has nothing to do with the information that Innova Next SL had been awarded eleven public contracts with different administrations between 2021 and 2022, for a value of about 21 million.”
While the Madrid Court limits the investigation to the contracts awarded to Barrabés’ company, it also makes it clear that not only the three that appeared in the initial complaint should be the only ones analyzed. This aborts the attempt by Gómez’s defense to have the investigation archived with the argument that these contracts are already investigated by the European Prosecutor’s Office, competent as they involve money from the EU.
“99 contracting files have been located, the amount of which is estimated at 24,923,443 euros (…) in which the majority of the awards would have been obtained by Innova Next Sl, without all of them being financed by European funds through Red.es [empresa pública]. Without forgetting that the perfect awarding of the tenders would not prevent the prior commission of the crime of influence peddling,” establish the magistrates of the higher instance than Peinado.
“Gómez’s business interest”
And the magistrates go further by incorporating the issue of the creation of a company by Begoña Gómez on November 21, 2023 with the name Transforma TSC, a company whose “object and name coincide with the master’s degree from the Complutense University of which the person under investigation is co-director.” Although in an indicative way, the magistrates warn, this fact “would allow us to add to our first approximation (…) the existence not only of a professional interest in the teaching field but also in the business field.”
The three judges of Section 23 reject that Judge Peinado has undertaken a “prospective” investigation, as reported by the Prosecutor’s Office and Gómez’s defense. “Prospective is the investigation that begins in an indeterminate manner in the search for possible criminal conduct without a minimum of specificity and well-founded suspicions, but not one that is based on rationally suspicious conduct (exercise of influence or promise of exercise to condition decision-making). in exchange for undue advantages), initiates a broad investigation that allows us to know in detail all those circumstances that may influence and determine its qualification.
On the other hand, the judges of the Provincial Court make another correction to Peinado regarding the accumulation of the Hazteoír complaint. “No new events are contemplated that could have altered what has already been resolved. Consequently, the content of what we established as the legitimate object of the investigation should not be altered,” the Section 23 magistrates resolve.
Source: www.eldiario.es
