He Judge Juan Carlos Peinado has partially upheld a complaint from the ultra-Catholic organization Make Yourself Hear against Begoña Gómezwife of the President of the Government, adding two new crimes to the investigation that she opened last April following a complaint from the Ultra Clean Hands pseudo-union.
The Spanish far-right orbit is behind the complaints that keep the spouse of a President of the Government under investigation for the first time, while Pedro Sánchez is confident that “time will put everything in its place”, said this same Tuesday after hearing the news of the extension of the case against his partner.
What does this expansion mean, what can happen now, once the Madrid Court has endorsed Peinado’s investigation, despite limiting it to eliminate the rescue with public money of the Air Europa airline.
To begin with, the case is expanded. In these moments, Begoña Gómez She is being investigated for four crimes: influence peddling, corruption in business, misappropriation and intrusion. All of them, related to his chair in the Complutense University.
In this sense, it must be clarified that the Chair of Competitive Social Transformationcreated in 2019 by the Complutense, which Begoña Gómez co-directed until recently, is not a typical university chair, but rather an academic project that receives business funding.
Begoña Gómez He began his relationship with Complutense University in 2014, when her husband had just been elected general secretary of the socialists. At that time, He took charge of the Master of Fundraising or Fundraisingwhich is Gómez’s professional specialization.
In the case of the Chair of Competitive Social Transformationhas been financed by commercial companies La Caixa and Reale Insurancewho have contributed 15,000 euros a year each.
Two others investigated
It must be remembered that the rector of the Complutense, Joaquin Goyacheis being investigated in the same case, for an alleged crime of influence peddling in the creation of the Begoña Gómez chair. So is the businessman Juan Carlos Barrabeswho was a professor of the master’s degree directed by Begoña Gómez and who was awarded with one of his companies a public aid contest, for which he provided, among others, a letter of endorsement from Gómez as director of the Complutense master’s degree.
In summer 2021, a Temporary Union of Companies (UTE) formed by one of its businesses in Barrabés obtained, in three different lots, 8.4 million euros when it was awarded a public tender by the entity Red.es, attached to the Ministry for Digital Transformation and Public Servicefor aid for digital processes.
These events are investigated by Judge Peinado as a possible crime of business corruption and another of influence peddling.
However, the Central Operational Unit (UCO) of the Civil Guard rule out irregularities in the granting of public aid to Barrabés. The investigators do not detect any type of pressure on the part of Begoña Gómez so that the offer from the UTE of Barrabés was finally the winner.
The UCO indicates that Gómez’s endorsement letter had no weight in the UTE’s final score. The Madrid City Council also endorsed by letter to Barrabes. The Barrabés UTE project obtained the best score in the bidding process, as confirmed by the UCO.
The ‘software’ of the chair
Now Judge Peinado is also investigating whether Pedro Sánchez’s wife appropriated a software which he used in the professorship, financed with the funds of the two aforementioned companies.
Although rector Goyache declared before the judge on July 5 that there were no irregularities in the Begoña Gómez chaira report that the University later sent to Judge Peinado accuses the wife of the President of the Government of registering a software of the university center.
But Gómez’s defense denies the crime of misappropriation in relation to software and invokes a series of emails from the university itself in which it gives precise instructions to Gómez to register the domain.
Professional intrusion
Peinado believes that Gómez could have committed a crime of intrusion because “she has not proven that she has the knowledge or powers to be technically qualified” to prepare the technical specifications for contracting the technical and technological assistance and advisory service for the creation of the aforementioned softwareintended for the management and measurement of impact for small and medium-sized companies and which was used in the chair he directed.
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