A year ago, the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, surprised the entire country and his own party with an unprecedented gesture in Spanish politics: he canceled his agenda for four days to decide if he continued in office before what he defined as a “campaign of harassment” against his wife, Begoña Gómez. Just a few hours before it had transpired that a Madrid Court had opened an investigation to investigate its professional activities and relations after the complaint of a pseudosindicato that supported press information, some directly false. That pause that kept the PSOE in suspense, to its partners and the members of the Government and even led to a demonstration in favor of the doors of Ferraz, closed with another message in which Sanchez just confirmed his continuity in the position for the “pending regeneration” of democracy, but without making more ads.
Twelve months later, what began with a complaint of seven folios filed by clean hands – and that included the bully of a subsidy to the woman of the president who actually went to a Cantabrian businesswoman of the same name – has resulted in an exhaustive investigation that accumulates 15 volumes and for which more than thirty people have been questioned, including the President himself and the Minister of Justice. In all this time, and despite the media noise, Judge Juan Carlos Peinado still does not find evidence of the four crimes he investigates in Sánchez’s wife. In his last battery of summons, the judge points to the government and the Ibex.
The Provincial Court, which is the upper instance that reviews the decisions of the instructional judges, as is the case of hairstyle, has given a partial guarantee to its inquiries and corrected some of its excesses. “The real truth cannot be obtained at any price. Not everything is lawful in the discovery of truth,” he warned by the court last January. The summary also accumulates two exculpatory reports of the Civil Guard, as well as a good number of resources of the Prosecutor’s Office and the defenses, which have criticized an “erratic” instruction and the “constant darkness” with which they consider that combs direct the cause.
This Wednesday, April 16, just when a year of the start of the investigation was completed, the most famous judge in Spain moved for the second time to the Moncloa Palace to interrogate a member of the Executive after last summer made a statement to the President of the Government as a husband (and witness). On this occasion, the witness was the head of the Presidency, Justice and Relations with the Cortes, Félix Bolaños, whom he interrogated in search of indications of the crime of embezzlement that he investigates for the tasks carried out by Cristina Álvarez, the advisor in charge of coordinating the agenda of the wife of the chief of the Executive.
The statement was extended for almost two and a half hours, in which Bolaños explained that she did not meet the advisor until “weeks later” that she began working in La Moncloa and that, therefore, she did not participate in her hiring. He also explained that he was never his boss and that he did not know his functions, although he framed his appointment within the legality and explained that positions like that have always existed by requiring the figure of the wives of the government presidents. What the judge investigates is whether the errands that the advisor made for Begoña Gómez constitute a embezzlement of public money, since she is hired by the Moncloa.
Air Europa rescue
The matter that led again this week hairstyle to Moncloa has to do with the last branch of the case of the various that the judge has opened supporting popular accusations such as Vox, Hazteoir or Iustitia Europe – the first two linked to the extreme right. These pieces investigate any professional activity that Gomez has developed since her husband is president: of her masters at the Complutense University to her powers at the Institute of Business (IE).
The cause has been expanding after the initial complaint accused Gomez of favoring Air Europa in his millionaire rescue during the pandemic for the relationship he established in the IE with the owners of Globalia, owner of the airline; and of benefiting the businessman Juan Carlos Barrabés, awardee of public contracts.
One of the last pirouettes of the judge has been related to the insistence on investigating whether Gomez facilitated the rescue of Air Europa despite the fact that the Provincial Court has said twice that this matter must be out of the investigations due to lack of indications. The UCO also ruled out the suspicions collected in the complaint of clean hands.
This recent episode again emerged the discrepancies between the judge and the Prosecutor’s Office, which has requested since the beginning the archive of the case. The Public Ministry describes as a “unusual” that the magistrate continues to focus on the aid granted by the Government in 2020 to rescue the Air Europa company despite the delimitations of the Provincial Court.
Fruit of these investigation lines, the judge keeps four other people related to the different professional stages of Gomez. In this investigation, in addition, there was a totally exceptional circumstance: the four became investigated after appearing as witnesses – with the obligation to tell the truth – and deny the existence of any illegality or favor of favor that would support the crime of influence peddling that the magistrate attributes to the woman of Sánchez, to which it also imputes corruption in business, undue appropriation and professional intrusion.
From Barrabés to the Complutense software
In the first months, the magistrate focused the inquiries in Barrabés, a well -known entrepreneur of the Internet sector. According to clean hands, the entrepreneur and the UTE from which he participated were benefited, in two public awards for the “letters of recommendation” or even “guarantees” he received from the president’s wife.
Actually, Gómez signed a statement of interest that Barrabés presented in that contest, where he proved that the master who was going to collaborate with the training program to which Barrabés opted. It was a type letter: identical to which 32 more people signed. Among others, the director of the Employment Agency of the Madrid City Council.
However, the Madrid Audience said that does not exclude that there are influence peddling in the eleven public contracts with different administrations that obtained a Barrabés company for 21 million euros. The court did prove the businessman in his appeal against the registration of his home and his offices while he was in the hospital for a serious illness. The judges determined that the instructor did not justify the “urgency” of making those records when the investigated was admitted and warned that “the real truth cannot be obtained at any price.”
From there he combed the focus on Gómez’s professional activity in La Complutense, where Barrabés was a collaborator in the courses she directed. Within the framework of this branch he has questioned representatives of Google or Indra and has summoned for next May the current president of Telefónica and former president of Indra, Marc Murtra; and the former head of the latter, Fernando Abril-Martorell.
The instructor first investigated if Gómez’s hiring in the Complutense in 2020 to direct a chair was due to a new influence peddling. His rector, Joaquín Goyache, has already appeared twice, the first as a witness and the second as accused. And in the two he has denied having given Gomez’s favor and has been disconnected from the creation of the chair.
Also a report by the Complutense rejected the existence of irregularities in the chair, but asked the judge to investigate whether he illegally managed software developed for his chair. The business sponsorship of that software is behind the citations of technology and Ibex managers. There is no indication that the aforementioned software led to any economic benefit or Begoña Gómez or anyone.
Another witnesses who ended up accused is Juan José Güemes. Strong man in the governments of Esperanza Aguirre in the Community of Madrid, he was called to testify to explain why the Institute of Business, where he is a manager, hired Gomez to put in front of his Africa Center. The businessman said that his signing was not related to the status of women of the government president, but the judge was convinced that another witness had been blunt by stating that Güemes had given the order to hire her for being Sánchez’s wife and chose to impute him. As stated in the transcription of the statement, the witness never made that statement.
The last branch of the investment in Si Gomez has at your disposal a Moncloa advisor to coordinate his agenda and also his professional affairs. Among other actions, he sent emails related to the two masters and the chair directed by Gómez in the Complutense until a few months ago, in what is a hairstyle to the existence of an alleged crime of embezzlement. This new branch of the case has served the magistrate to try to climb the case to the heart of the Government with its new visit to the Moncloa Palace on Wednesday. Some of the last decisions of the judge has been to agree an extension, so the investigation will lengthen another six months. Meanwhile, PP and Vox use the summary as ammunition against the government, which they accuse of being besieged by corruption. In the last hours the deputy Cayetana Álvarez de Toledo came to ask for the resignation of Bolaños for his citation as a witness before the judge. And the day that Feijóo and theirs do not ask Sanchez to dissolve the cameras and summon elections is rare. A year after that pause, the president repeats that he is willing to exhaust the legislature until 2027 and then be a candidate to opt for four more years.
Source: www.eldiario.es
