The magistrate Juan Carlos Peinado, who is keeping the case against Begoña Gómez open, has decided to take a huge leap in his investigation against the wife of the President of the Government for crimes of influence peddling and corruption in business. After Pedro Sánchez’s wife invoked her right not to testify last Friday, the judge has agreed to question the president himself as a witness and has issued a resolution to take his statement on July 30, starting at 11:00, in the La Moncloa palace. After hearing the news, the PP has asked for Sánchez’s resignation. And Vox, appearing as a popular accusation in the summary, has added: “We will not rest until we evict the corrupt clan that occupies La Moncloa and make them pay before a court.”
In a document dated last Friday, Peinado has accepted one of the requests that the popular accusations —led by the far-right party Vox— put on the table that same day after Gómez’s appearance in court. “It is considered convenient, useful and pertinent to receive a statement from the husband of the person under investigation, Pedro Sánchez Castejón,” the judge summarizes in the document, where he indicates that he also wants to record that interrogation.
The Criminal Procedure Act provides that husbands, as well as other direct relatives of those under investigation, “are exempt from the obligation to testify” against their wives in order to guarantee the rights of the defence. However, it is contemplated that it will be the magistrate who “warns” them of this, and that he will also have to tell the witness that, although he does not want to answer anyone’s questions, he can “make the statements he considers necessary”.
The legislation also establishes that members of the Government may testify in writing as witnesses in judicial proceedings when these concern facts that they have “known by reason of their position” – this has been done, for example, by several of the current ministers in the Pegasus case opened in the National Court; or did it in the past Esperanza Aguirre in the Gürtel case when she was already the former president of the Community of Madrid. But the magistrate, who assured that he was investigating “all the acts, conduct and behavior that have been carried out by Gómez since her husband became president of the Government of Spain,” is now clinging to the precept of the law that allows him to question a member of the Executive in person and in his office when it comes to “matters of which he has not had knowledge by reason of his position.”
Five paragraphs
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The ruling issued by Judge Peinado to summon Sánchez as a witness consists of only five paragraphs, spread over two pages. In this document, the magistrate states that he is investigating a “chain of influence peddling” and the “possible relationship of [Gómez] with an authority”. All this, in an investigation against the president’s wife that began three months ago; and in which the details of the investigation have not yet been clarified. Although, from the content of the magistrate’s resolutions, it is clear that the relationship of the wife of the head of the Government with the businessman Juan Carlos Barrabés is being investigated; her connection with Javier Hidalgo, who was CEO of Globalia, the group that owns Air Europa —a company rescued by the Council of Ministers in 2020—; and the links of the president’s wife with the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM), where she co-directed a chair.
In order to carry out his initiative, the magistrate has ordered the Police and the IT services of the Community of Madrid – which is responsible for providing the Administration of Justice in this region with the means – to go to La Moncloa to “install the necessary devices” to record the interrogation of the President of the Government. Judge Peinado adds that the agents and these technicians will go together with the corresponding judicial commission so that they can record whether “any incident occurs.”
Third defendant
The case against Begoña Gómez has also undergone another substantial change this Monday. The investigating judge has decided to charge Joaquín Goyache, rector of the Complutense University. Peinado has taken this decision after having already taken his statement as a witness on July 5, a condition that prevented him from exercising his right not to testify and attend the hearing with a lawyer, and which forced him to tell the truth under the threat that, if he did not, legal measures would be taken against him. Goyache then stated that he did not detect the existence of irregularities in Gómez’s relationship with the UCM.
In a ruling issued this Monday, the judge argues that he must now charge the rector, based on the “testimony he gave on July 5” and the statements of the current vice-rector for Planning, Coordination and Institutional Relations of the Complutense University of Madrid, José María Coello de Portugal, and his predecessor in the post, Juan Carlos Doadrio, who appeared in court last Friday. According to legal sources present at that meeting, both explained that they did not detect any irregularities, but Doadrio said that Goyache contacted him for the creation of the chair and that he gave him the green light because he saw everything was correct.
During Goyache’s questioning as a witness, the judge insisted on asking what kind of academic requirements are needed to direct a chair at the UCM. “I ask you about the academic qualification requirement to become part of the teaching staff of the Complutense University of Madrid,” the magistrate explained to the rector, who responded: “You cannot be considered as teaching staff because we are in continuous training.” “Are no qualifications required?” Peinado asked. “In some cases, none,” replied Goyache, who has now been summoned to testify as a defendant on July 29.
Goyache is the third person charged in the case, after Begoña Gómez and businessman Juan Carlos Barrabés. The latter was charged last week, after having previously been questioned as a witness. Legal sources explain to EL PAÍS that the Prosecutor’s Office has already opposed the indictment of Barrabés, considering that Judge Peinado’s decision is “null and void due to lack of motivation and violation of rights.”
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