The possible crimes that can be committed during the teaching of a university master’s degree constitute the new legal challenge of Juan Carlos Peinado, instructor of the case against Begoña Gómez, who now accuses the wife of the president of the government of professional intrusion and embezzlement. The new line of investigation opened by Peinado foresees two events: the prolongation in time of the trial which has been taking place in his court since April, on the one hand, and the visits to the court of the accused, with their consequent media attention, on the one hand, elsewhere. the other.
As he already did with the statement of the President of the Government at the Palace of La Moncloa, Peinado ends the ceremony, although diligence will help clarify the facts. Still under the protection of the law, in this case the law of criminal procedure, Juan Carlos Peinado opted for something that could have been avoided: summoning Begoña Gómez in person so that she can go get a summons in which she will be informed that she is under investigation for new crimes and the day he is to go to testify. Instead of summoning the person indicted to court one day, Begoña Gómez will have to go there twice, with the respective security deployments that accompany the wife of the president of the central government.
The Penal Code punishes the offense of usurpation of functions and professional intrusion with a fine of six to twelve months, according to article 403 of the Penal Code, which is the one included in the list of facts drawn up by the association. ultra HazteOir, according to Hairdressing criteria. The magistrate went from sending the reasons for the accusation in single-paragraph resolutions to this time in a nine-page order in which we find none of the judge’s usual sentences or the way in which he writes usually.
The ultra-Catholic association claims in its complaint that Begoña Gómez wrote, without being qualified to do so, the “technical prescription sheets” as part of the process of creating a “impact management and measurement” platform. for small and medium-sized businesses,” as part of the master’s degree that he co-directed. According to HazteOir, Begoña Gómez does not have the “technical” training to scientifically know the needs of the university in this regard.
The other crime that Peinado adds to those that he already indirectly attributes to Begoña Gómez is that of illicit appropriation. In this case, the wife of the president of the government risks a fine if we take into account what is declared by the judge, who identifies the facts as likely to fall within the framework of article 253. In this case, HazteOir accuses Begoña Gómez of having “registered” a company in her name with the TSC Competitive Social Transformation master’s degree, then doing the same with the software, the digital tool that would have been created thanks to the financing of private companies.
Judge Peinado involved UCO in the investigation into the university documentation. In an order dated October 31, the magistrate orders the specialized unit of the Civil Guard to analyze the aforementioned documentation and “issue the appropriate report.” The result of the two previous UCO reports ruled out that Gómez had committed any crime. Judge Peinado ignored their findings and moved on.
Vox has already tried to accuse Begoña Gómez of the same facts, but by attributing to her the crime of influence peddling. Another Madrid court, on the 34th, warned that the far-right party was confusing dates in its complaint.
In this order, Judge Coro Monreal ruled: “In the public procurement file, it does not appear that it was developed outside of the rules that govern public procurement. » This was to attribute to Gómez influence over the official who dictates the opening of the tender procedure. “There is no evidence that he could have had any influence on the official who issued the first resolution, nor on the members of the procurement committee,” he added.
The president of the Court of Instruction number 34 alluded in her resolution to the fact that the list of technical requirements was signed by Begoña Gómez, but did not insist on the fact that the facts presented could constitute another crime other than that indicated by Vox, influence peddling, and which the judge rejected.
Last July, the Complutense University sent a letter to the judge in which it informed him that its internal investigation had not revealed any irregularity or harm to the center due to the actions of Begoña Gómez. The center clarified that this was not a “definitive conclusion”, attributing this lack of evidence to “the lack of collaboration of certain stakeholders”.
In this letter, the educational center, dependent on the Community of Madrid, complained about the lack of collaboration from Gómez, without mentioning it. The request for information was sent on June 11 and the next day, the president’s wife acknowledged receipt in another email in which she assured that she was gathering the information. On June 26, Gómez’s father died, and on July 2, the Extraordinary Presidential Joint Follow-up Commission led by Gómez met.
During this meeting, Complutense hid from Begoña Gómez that the day before it had sent a letter to the judge accusing him of embezzlement and obstructing the investigation. He also rejected the information provided by Begoña Gómez during the meeting because, as the vice-rector for planning, José María Coello from Portugal, argued, “prudence” demanded not to accept the documentation they had requested a few days earlier and which they were complaining about. the day before to the judge that it had not been provided.
An email sent by an official at the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM) to Begoña Gómez and two others shows how the educational center’s Patent and Trademark Section was aware of the registration by the president’s wife of the government of the software brand with which he is committed to providing the extraordinary chair that he has created. “We sent you a link on how to register a domain,” the manager told Gómez in a message reported by elDiario.es.
For some reason, the summons for Begoña Gómez to appear in court on November 18 to be informed of her new accusation must be delivered “PERSONALLY” by members of the National Police to Begoña Gómez at the La Moncloa Palace, as indicated thus: in capital letters, the judge in the order issued on October 28.
No signs of irregularity
Judge Juan Carlos Peinado has been investigating Begoña Gómez for more than six months. An affair which began with a complaint from the ultra pseudo-union Clean Hands composed of press cuttings and a hoax which, initially, reported certain letters of recommendation that the wife of the president of the government, in collaboration with institutions like the Madrid City Council, contributed to a public tender in which the businessman Juan Carlos Barrabés participated. A few months later, these letters fell into oblivion, giving way to a cause with multiple ramifications which, for the moment, has not led to major discoveries.
The letters and rewards from Red.es to the Barrabés companies, a point that even the Madrid Court agreed to investigate, were contained in two reports from the Central Operational Unit (UCO) of the Civil Guard that rejected any irregularity. A few days ago, it was Alberto Martínez, director of the public company, who appeared in the Senate to deny any irregularity and qualify the language of the case: the letters did not support Barrabés but rather a program of the European social fund.
The suspicions raised by the popular accusations center on whether Gómez used his relationship with Pedro Sánchez to obtain preferential treatment at the Complutense University, for the benefit of Juan Carlos Barrabés, apart from the latest ramifications on the software apparently unrelated to his marriage.
The investigation into the master’s degrees and the professorship he held at Complutense has not yet shown signs of preferential treatment that the center itself has denied for more than a year. Both at the request of the judge and various requests for information. Both the judge and the accusations suppressed the meetings that Gómez held in La Moncloa with Barrabés and the rector of the university to the point of summoning the president of the government as a witness.
Nor were there any signs of impropriety in the Air Europa rescue, the line of inquiry that the Court twice asked to abandon because it was based on “conjectures” of Clean Hands. A rescue of hundreds of millions of euros which constitutes the primary obsession of the popular accusations of the affair, which constantly seek to link the case of Begoña Gómez to the Koldo case through this rescue and the figure of Javier Hidalgo, CEO of Globalia .
The case will be the subject of several relevant procedures in the coming weeks, in addition to the summons of Begoña Gómez herself. A few hours before his appearance, Juan José Güemes will go to the judge as a witness. A strong man in almost all of Esperanza Aguirre’s governments, a senior official of José María Aznar and generally not close to Pedro Sánchez’s PSOE, Güemes was identified as the author of the order to hire Begoña Gómez to head the Africa Center from the IE School of Business.
