Judge Juan Carlos Peinado continues to look for roads to raise the Moncloa Palace the cause that has been following for almost a year and a half against Begoña Gómez, wife of the president of the Government, Pedro Sánchez. The magistrate, who remains charged with the Government delegate in Madrid, Francisco Martínez, and who tried with the Minister of Justice, Félix Bolaños, now looks at the high position he currently holds the position that the previous two had in the presidency of the Government. In his last resolution, dated Wednesday, the judge asks who has been general secretaries of the Presidency since the advisor of Begoña Gómez was hired, although he has already questioned two of them, Bolaños and Martínez.
The current Secretary General of the Presidency is Judit Alexandra Gómez Pedraz, who replaced Francisco Martínez in the late 2023, when he was elected as Government delegate in Madrid. As usual in hairstyle, the judge does not reason the ordered diligence and is limited to pointing out that the General Secretariat of Presidency of the Government is required to report the “full name of the different persons who have been holding the position of Secretary General of Presidency of the Government since July 11, 2018”, date on which Cristina Álvarez Assistant of Begoña Gómez was appointed.
Hag interrogated Bolaños and Martínez in search of indications of the crime of embezzlement that he investigates for the tasks performed by Cristina Álvarez, the advisor in charge of coordinating the agenda of the wife of the chief of the Executive and also charged. The magistrate deepened in this line of research supported by Vox, which in December presented a complaint that was based on the existence of two emails that the assistant sent in 2021 on behalf of Begoña Gómez to directives of Reale, insurer who financed the chair that Sánchez's woman directed at the Complutense University. In fact, the judge has summoned to declare Begoña Gómez and the assistant next week.
Now, the request to La Moncloa to indicate the name of the “different people” who have been holding the position of Secretary General of the Government who appointed the advisor offers clues about the next steps that the magistrate can take. Especially after the Supreme Court rejected its maneuver to climb the case to Moncloa and involve the Minister of Justice, Félix Bolaños, to which he came to take a statement in his office last April.
Hajinado tried to involve Bolaños for embezzlement on the argument that he was general secretary of the government's presidency when the advisor was appointed. In the interrogation, the minister denied any irregularity. But the judge insisted on asking the high court to open a case against him for the appointment and control of the assistant's functions. The Supreme Judges made it clear that Bolaños could not be accused of the mere fact of having had a position of responsibility at the time of the appointment of that worker.
In their car they also insisted that embezzlement is a “malicious” crime. That is, that the author requires acting with conscious intention or will to commit a crime. And that working in the same place as the advisor with command position does not imply an “automatic and objective attribution” of the crime, as he intended to comb.
After questioning Bolaños, the judge charged Francisco Martín. In his case, the citation was motivated by the fact that – in the position of Secretary General of the Presidency of the Government that held between 2021 and 2023 – it was the “responsible and superior hierarchical” of the advisor when he sent emails “to various persons and institutions” where Begoña Gómez carried out “totally disconnected” activities of his status as the wife of the president. Before the judge, Martín said that he did not participate in the hiring of the advisor in 2018, when he was head of the Cabinet of the General Secretariat of Presidency, and that he also did not know “no breach” in the exercise of his duties when he rose to Secretary General of the Presidency.
In a single providence of four paragraphs, Hajinado expands the investigation to limits difficult to calculate. Just below the request for information on the current General Secretary of the Presidency and its predecessors, the magistrate orders the Central Operational Unit (UCO) of the Civil Guard that is inaute to all emails, received and sent, from the account assigned to Begoña Gómez since July 11, 2018 until this Wednesday. Necessarily, among those emails there will be many who are not related to the object of the investigation.
By rejecting the imputation of Bolaños, both the Provincial Court of Madrid and the Supreme Court have been correcting the hairstyle instruction, which the defenses and the Prosecutor's Office consider clearly prospective. However, the second instance has been leaving in its resolutions a margin that Hajed has used to insist on its lines of research. It happened with the rescue of Air Europa and although the UCO had indicated in two reports that Begoña Gómez was oblivious to that government's decision in Pandemia. The judge continued feeding press holders for months until the Provincial Court expressly prohibited him from continuing with that line of investigation.
In the same resolution, the judges of the higher instance suspended the imputation of the rector of the Complutense, Joaquín Goyache. In another previous decision, the Provincial Court annulled the registration of the domicile of businessman Juan Carlos Barrabés, also charged in the case against Begoña Gómez. At the time, the judge tried to interrogate him during a hospital admission suffering from the serious disease he suffers.
