Begoña Gómez, wife of the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, has been charged with influence peddling for 532 days. They are the same days that Judge Juan Carlos Peinado has been looking for, without success at the moment, some indication of that crime.
The origin of the open cause against the president's wife was the clearance of clean hands filed on April 16, 2024 for an alleged influences based on press clippings. Some of the news cited in the complaint was false and others leaned on conjectures with very little base.
When the hairstyle admitted the complaint, the main proof of the crime pursued was a support letter signed by Begoña Gómez as co -director of a chair at the Complutense University in favor of a company by Juan Carlos Barrabés that achieved a millionaire contract of a state company. The businessman incorporated into the proposal that presented to the public contest a support letter of the president's wife along with 31 other similar letters of technology companies and institutions, including the Madrid City Council.
Barrabés won two of the lots of the contest for the formation of unemployed in new technologies for almost 8.3 million euros. The entrepreneur had collaborated as a professor – three classes in two years to 150 euros each – in the master's degree that Gómez in the Complutense University.
The combed judge urgently commissioned the UCO of the Civil Guard a report on business under suspicion of Begoña Gómez. The agents analyzed the contest in which Barrabés took 8.3 million euros from Red.es and investigated all members of the contracting table that awarded the contracts. But the UCO did not find links with Begoña Gómez and ruled out a possible influence peddling in the contest. The Civil Guard also studied whether the conditions of conditions and the criteria used to evaluate the proposals introduced some novelty with respect to similar network procedures.
The two support letters signed by Begoña Gómez in favor of the Barrabés company were the only indication that the Provincial Court considered solid enough to not archive the investigation opened by the Judge Peinated after the complaint of clean hands.
The three magistrates of the Provincial Court in charge of resolving the resources against the instruction of Judge Peinado admitted that the content of the Vox complaint was “flashing, with a first implausible factual block or with erroneous data.” And they added that the alleged influence peddling in the rescue of Air Europa for the relationship of Begoña Gómez with company managers was “a simple conjecture, beyond temporary and personal coincidences.” However, Begoña Gómez's firm in the Barrabés company support letter was “a suspicion based on objective and verifiable data” and therefore could advance the investigation opened by the Judge Peinado.
The hearing concluded with a council to the instructor: “If verified checks and investigations precise The hypothesis will be diluted will proceed to agree on the immediate file” of the cause. When the three magistrates wrote their car, the Civil Guard report was already known that diluted all the influences hypothesis. But the audience ignored this fact and refused to value “what the instructor has not yet valued because he would mean invading his exclusive competition.”
Hairstyle despised the report of the UCO and continued with the judicial investigation by adding to the case against the president's woman up to four new crimes: corruption in business, professional intrusion, undue appropriation and embezzlement of public funds.
The two Red.es contracts in favor of Barrabés had been financed with European funds and the European Prosecutor's Office against Corruption assumed the cause in May 2024. A year later he commissioned a report on the contest. An expert from the Ministry of Finance assigned to the Support Unit of the State General Intervention in the European Prosecutor's Office signed with pseudonym work (they usually do it to preserve their anonymity against possible pressures or reprisals). The auditor destroys in 300 report pages the contracting system used by Red.es in the contract awarded to Barrabés that motivated the imputation of Begoña Gómez. Its inspection of the contest found multiple irregularities in the procedure: those in charge of assessing the technical issues of the offers should have been independent and non -technicians of Red.es; The economic valuation weighed much less than what is legally established in this type of competitions; It never had to score more companies that presented support letters -such as Barrabés.
Red.es sources disqualified this report because the contracting rules questioned by “illegal” are the same in force in that state company since 2011 -there was therefore a special treatment in the contest awarded to Barrabés; The valuation formulas used in all competitions have the favorable reports of the State Advocacy since 2018; The 33 audits applied since 2011 to the hiring of Red.es never observed irregularities.
532 days later, the report of the expert who signs with Pseudonym did not find any evidence that the letter signed by Begoña Gómez influenced the award of the Red.es contest to the Barrabés company. The indications of crime that forced the judicial investigation to the president's wife have dissolved as smoke in the air. But Begoña Gómez is closer to the bench every day in a trial … with jury.