On April 8, the far-right organization Manos Limpias filed a complaint against Begoña Gómez, wife of the Prime Minister, for alleged influence peddling. The complaint was based on press clippings, some of which were false and most of which contained no evidence of the influence peddling they suggested.
Judge Juan Carlos Peinado García, head of the 41st Court of Instruction in Madrid, opened proceedings, declared them secret, requested a report from the Central Operational Unit of the Civil Guard and summoned as witnesses the heads of the two media outlets that had published the news on which the complaint was based.
One hundred days later, the judicial investigation into Peinado is under suspicion – there are multiple appeals pending in the Provincial Court for procedures that violate the law and leave the main suspect defenseless, plus a complaint for disclosure of secrets that has not been answered in the High Court of Justice of Madrid.
From the investigation known so far, from the expert reports requested and from the testimonial evidence provided by the investigating judge, not a single piece of evidence has been found of the influence peddling and corruption in the businesses that the judge is looking for. Despite this, Peinado has already charged the businessman Juan Carlos Barrabés four days after taking his statement as a witness and despite the fact that the Civil Guard has ruled out in two reports the existence of irregularities in the suspicious contracts analysed.
The court has also charged the rector of the Complutense University, Joaquín Goyache, after taking his statement and discovering that he met with Gómez in Moncloa to discuss his chair and that the Madrid university admits professors in its continuing education courses without academic qualifications. In addition, it has summoned President Pedro Sánchez as a witness, following a request from the popular prosecution represented by Vox.
These are the main milestones of a dizzying investigation with no known results.
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No trace of influence peddling in favour of Barrabés. The Civil Guard submitted its first report on the case to the judge on May 14, a month after opening proceedings. That report ruled out influence peddling in the contracts that Red.es —dependent on the Ministry of Economy when the events occurred— awarded to Innova Next, a company owned by Juan Carlos Barrabés, one of the professors of the course of the chair that Begoña Gómez directed at the Complutense. Gómez had signed one of the 32 letters of support from institutions and companies with which Barrabés entered the competition. These letters accounted for 8% of the points in the competition and the officials who reported on it only referred to the letters from technology companies. The journalists from the media that reported these events assured the judge that they never knew if the awards were a consequence of the influence that Gómez exerted on the officials who signed the contract. Not a single piece of evidence points to the existence of pressure on the officials to award the contract to Barrabés. The businessman also obtained multimillion-dollar contracts from Madrid City Council, headed by José Luis Martínez-Almeida (PP). And he was one of the technology experts invited by Pablo Casado’s PP to some of its conferences.
No evidence of crime in Air Europa bailout. The Civil Guard report indicated that the only element that can link Gómez to Globalia (the group that owns Air Europa) is the fact that he met Javier Hidalgo (CEO at the time) at two events that took place in 2020 in which the company Wakalua (a subsidiary of Globalia) participated. “There is no evidence that these events could be linked to the ministerial decision to bail out Air Europa.” The main European countries bailed out their airlines during the pandemic with amounts that were five times higher than what the Spanish government had granted to Air Europa. The Provincial Court considered that the theory that Air Europa had been favoured by the government thanks to the friendships that Begoña Gómez had with Javier Hidalgo was a “simple conjecture”.
Hiring at the Complutense without an academic degree. Although Judge Peinado never motivated an investigation into Gómez’s activities at the Complutense University in his multiple resolutions, his latest proceedings are aimed at finding out whether there was influence peddling in the hiring of the president’s wife to direct an extraordinary chair and whether it is possible to teach at that center without having an academic degree. The rector of the Complutense University, Joaquín Goyache, declared to the judge that it was Gómez who proposed the creation of this extraordinary chair and that the monitoring committee created for these purposes accepted the project. The president of this committee, then vice-rector Juan Carlos Doadrio, said that it was the rector who told him that the chair directed by Gómez had to be created, but that he did not see any irregularities. The rector also clarified to the judge that it is possible to teach at the Complutense without having an academic degree.
A software that Gomez never put in his name. The university itself has asked the judge to investigate whether Gómez misappropriated the software which she herself commissioned to create a free-to-use technological platform where small and medium-sized companies could consult certain aspects related to their activity. Gómez has proven that she has not registered the software in your name. The Complutense University already knows this.
A revelation of secrets by the investigating judge that is being analyzed by the High Court. The judge, according to the facts proven in the summary, breached the secrecy that he himself had decreed by ordering the dissemination of a note in which he informed about the investigation into Gómez and, fundamentally, because he provided part of the secret summary to a popular accusation when it was not even available to the lawyer of the accused person. On May 30, the journalist Máximo Pradera filed a complaint against Judge Peinado with all the chronological milestones of this alleged disclosure of secrets. Almost two months later, the High Court of Justice of Madrid has still not responded. The same judicial body took just one month to admit the complaint for disclosure of secrets against the Madrid provincial prosecutor’s office of Alberto González Amador, boyfriend of Isabel Díaz Ayuso and confessed tax fraudster.
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