The Public Prosecutor’s Office has submitted a document to Judge Juan Carlos Peinado in which it demands to be present at the interrogation that the magistrate intends to carry out next Tuesday in La Moncloa with the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, as a witness in the case in which his wife, Begoña Gómez, is accused of influence peddling and corruption in business. In a document dated Thursday, July 25, to which EL PAÍS has had access, the public prosecutor criticizes the judge that, “beyond knowing that the statement [de Sánchez] It would be at 11:00 on July 30, 2024 at the Moncloa Palace, and that it would be recorded, there are issues on which there is no ruling”: mainly, that the magistrate has not specified whether he will be accompanied by the parties involved – the Prosecutor’s Office, the popular accusation and the defense of Begoña Gómez – something that, according to the prosecutor, is required by article 773.1 of the Criminal Procedure Law.
“There are certain elements [en la providencia dictada por el juez el pasado miércoles y en la que citó a Sánchez como testigo] “which distances us from a testimonial evidence carried out in accordance with the parameters of the Criminal Procedure Law and the basic procedural principles,” warns the prosecutor José Manuel San Baldomero in the document sent to the 41st Court of Instruction of Madrid. And he asks “what would be the consequence of holding the act without summons and presence of the parties involved for reasons beyond their control.” “It could give rise to the ineffectiveness of the statement or to the request for repetition if defenselessness is appreciated,” the Prosecutor’s Office itself responds, thus suggesting that, if it is not allowed to attend the interrogation, it could request its subsequent annulment.
Having made this warning, the public ministry – which from the beginning has expressed its opposition to taking a statement from Pedro Sánchez – demands “that it be guaranteed [su] intervention in the act indicated, in accordance with the legal provisions and the rights and duties that govern the actions of the Public Prosecutor’s Office.” “And not only rights of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, but also rights of the person under investigation and also of whoever or those who exercise the popular accusation,” it underlines. The fact that the judge – “by deliberate decision or by mistake” – has not expressly foreseen that presence of the different parties on the day of Sánchez’s appearance, adds the Prosecutor’s Office, “constitutes a patent infringement of the right of the parties to intervene in the investigation proceedings from which they are not excluded or do not require their intervention according to law (and this testimony is not one of them).” According to the public prosecutor, this is causing a “flagrant violation of the right to effective judicial protection and the prohibition of defenselessness”, of the right to defense, of the principle of legality and the prohibition of arbitrariness, as well as of the principle of contradiction that should govern the practice of said diligence, “since the parties would be prevented from questioning a witness.”
The Public Prosecutor’s Office points out that Judge Peinado’s ruling avoids specifying “who are the members of the judicial commission” in this interrogation. “Generally, the representative of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, in on-call proceedings and in general, in the investigation, would be part of it, although in this case, given the absence of mention and subsequent diligence of summons or communication of any kind, it seems that he has decided not to be part of it,” protests the Public Prosecutor’s Office. “It gives the impression that only the investigating magistrate is going to go to the aforementioned statement, which would suppose a literal interpretation of articles 410 and following of the Criminal Procedure Law, clearly outdated and inconsistent with the constitutional principles that govern criminal proceedings, since the right of the parties to intervene in the investigation proceedings is recognized,” it insists. “There is no trace of this.” [en la providencia] of reference to the Public Prosecutor’s Office, the Popular Prosecutions that have appeared, and not even to the defence itself, giving the impression that they are not summoned to the act.” In case of doubt, therefore, the Public Prosecutor’s Office informs the judge that it wants to be present at this court appearance of the President of the Government.
Once this main requirement has been established, the prosecution brief also asks to know “how the representatives of these parties will be identified to the security service, whether it is necessary to contact a security officer, whether the identity of those who will attend must be provided to the court, whether access is on foot or by vehicle after the license plates have been communicated to the appropriate person, whether they would be identified by the Clerk of the Court…”. “The range of options and unknowns is as wide as the uncertain answers that one might imagine”, it points out.
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Last Wednesday, Pedro Sánchez requested to give his testimony in writing and not in person, arguing that the law allows him to do so by virtue of his position. The judge rejected this request from the President of the Government on Friday.
Imputation of the rector of the Complutense
In another document dated July 25, the prosecution asks the judge to provide a “minimal” explanation of why he has charged Joaquín Goyache, rector of the Complutense University, in the same case in which Begoña Gómez is being investigated. Goyache testified before Judge Peinado on July 5 as a witness – therefore, with an obligation to tell the truth – but just two weeks later, last Monday, the magistrate changed his status to that of accused and summoned him again for next Monday, the 29th. “This is the second witness who is now considered to be under investigation after giving a statement in court after having been warned under oath of his obligation to tell the truth, and warned of the penal consequences if he does not do so, taking this statement into account as a justification for the change,” says the prosecution. The other case is that of businessman Carlos Barrabés, who also went from witness to accused in a few days. And in both, according to the Prosecutor’s Office, the judge incurs in the same defect: he does not present “factual and legal elements” to justify this change of condition.
“We understand that it is necessary that the judicial resolution that changes and worsens the procedural status of the witness until then highlights what the extremes, verbalizations, omissions, silences, inaccuracies or issues were [en su declaración] “These statements could be self-incriminating”, the public prosecutor asserts, recalling that Goyache was never warned “that these statements could incriminate him”. “The witness now under investigation is called to testify on 29 July and there is no record of a specific charge of facts, nor does he know what point of his previous statement could have been considered a key element to consider him as a participant in a crime”, the prosecutor’s brief stresses. And it underlines that “a minimum motivation in the judicial resolution” is “necessary for all proceedings to take place within the channels of legality and without signs or suspicions of arbitrariness”.
For its part, Barrabés’ defence, led by Javier Sánchez-Junco, has appealed Peinado’s decision to investigate him and is asking that his summons to testify next Monday be cancelled because it considers that it “lacks any justification.” The appeal states that, when the judge summoned the businessman to testify as a witness, he already had in his possession the two UCO reports that the magistrate used to justify the accusation and, despite this, he kept him in his capacity as a witness (that is, with an obligation to tell the truth). The businessman believes that the judge should have suspended this statement if he understood that his answers could incriminate him and that he has not substantiated the motivation for charging him. It also specifies that, despite the fact that Barrabés demonstrated with a medical report that he suffers from a rare syndrome that attacks several systems of the body and that forces him to undergo “aggressive treatment”, the instructor summoned the doctor who treats him at the Hospital 12 de Octubre to corroborate it.
Begoña Gómez asks to speed up her appeal
Begoña Gómez’s lawyer, the former socialist minister Antonio Camacho, has filed an appeal before the Provincial Court of Madrid in which he asks that it not wait until September 30 to resolve his request that the investigation by Judge Juan Carlos Peinado be archived or limited, because rushing that deadline would cause “damage that cannot be repaired.” The Court had set that date to deliberate on the appeals presented by Gómez’s defense and by the Prosecutor’s Office, but Camacho maintains that the president’s wife and the rest of the accused “are being subjected to an indeterminate, prospective and continuously growing investigation, without guarantees, which is seriously harming their right to defense.” For this reason, he asks that the resolution of the appeals be accelerated.
The lawyer again accuses the judge of having engaged in an “erratic procedural drift” that has led to “serious violations of the right to defence”. According to him, the judge’s actions are “rife” with actions contrary to the right to a fair trial.
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