“Ignacio, if you don’t mind, could you receive Begoña Gómez?” This is the call that the CEO of Reale received, Ignacio Mariscalof insurance broker David Sanza, the same one who, as ABC revealed, served as a bridge between the company and Begoña Gómez when she was looking for funding to create an extraordinary chair at the Complutense University of Madrid.
This was stated by Mariscal as a witness before Judge Juan Carlos Peinado, who is investigating illegal acts of influence peddling and corruption in the business world and who, according to the full content of the appearance that ABC had access to, was interested in how Gómez ended up convincing Reale to sign a 60,000 euro financing agreement for four years.
It was, as he said, in August 2020. “He called me to see if I could have this meeting with Begoña Gómez for a Complutense project,” Mariscal clarified, to clarify that “not even” he had been told at that time that it would be a chair. He accepted and the meeting with Sanza and Gómez took place on September 8 at the Reale headquarters in Madrid. The friend of the president, he said, had a “passive participationsimply after making contact.
“He told me that the chair is in progress and will be created and that I had thought that Reale could be a collaborator of the chair. I just asked him how much it was and he said 15,000 euros a year for four years. The meeting ended, I left him my card and in the afternoon he sent me an email with some material that I am sending to Reale’s Sustainable Development Department so that they can analyse whether it is interesting or not and whether it suits us,” he explained. He did not specify the content: “I am not an expert.”
Questioned by the magistrate, Mariscal assured that Gómez had offered him the chair “as a finished product”, which was not the case with the other sponsor, the LaCaixa Foundation. Your number two, Marc-Simonwho had known Begoña Gómez since 2018, testified that when he explained the project to her “in mid-2020” he understood that it would be “a reality that will happen if he finds the companies that finance it.”
It was in July 2020 that she sent him a file with the details of the project after calling him by phone to ask for funding and “use of the auditorium” of the space. CaixaForum in Madridaccording to this witness. The foundation studied it, saw that it “connected” with its lines of work and in October, like Reale, signed the agreement that created the chair, for 15,000 euros per year for four years.
“He spoke about very relevant institutions”
Simón did not specify the exact date of the conversation and the sending of the file, but it is striking that also in July 2020, Begoña Gómez was telling the rector of the Complutense, Joaquín Goyache, that she already had “very important” companies interested in financing your educational project. “I don’t remember if he specifically gave me the two names (Reale and Caixa), I think some did, but he talked about very relevant institutions that were interested in a chair on competitive social transformation,” he told the judge as an investigator.
This conversation, according to his statement, took place at the Moncloa Palace around July 29, 2020, he did not know how to specify the exact day. He arrived there “in an official car” after being summoned by Begoña Gómez herself to a meeting, the first in person, after having gone through her secretary in the form of a telephone contact.
After discussing several topics, she offered to create this extraordinary chair and told him that there was “Very important companies” interestedas he answered during the interrogation with a nod. “As now the names of the agreement are mentioned so much, I do not know if it was before or if I discovered it after (the two sponsors). “He told me about very relevant entities,” he explained. However, he also acknowledged that Gómez did not know the rules for creating an extraordinary chair and he explained to him “the economic provisions to be respected.”
