Madrid judge Juan Carlos Peinado, who has been investigating Begoña Gómez for more than seven months following a complaint from Manos Médicas which provided various press articles as evidence, continues to focus on examining each of the professional stages of the wife of the President of the Government.
His latest moves focus on the time when he headed the IE Africa Center, a private business school project aimed at promoting innovation on the African continent, which Gómez joined after Sánchez’s arrival at Moncloa . After finding no signs of irregularity in the relationship established in the IE with the owners of Globalia, owner of the Air Europa company, and which was subsequently saved by the government during the pandemic; The judge is currently investigating whether there are irregularities in his signature for this private center.
This new line of investigation brought the director of IE and former regional advisor of the PP in Madrid Juan José Güemes before the judge this Monday. He was summoned as a witness and found himself accused after denying having given the order to hire Begoña Gómez because she was the wife of the president of the government. Before the judge, who was one of Esperanza Aguirre’s strongmen, he tried to explain that Gómez’s hiring was due to his experience in fundraising.
This, according to the judge, contradicts what was stated in court by another witness, IE human resources director Sonsoles Blanca Gil de Antuñano. This directive named Güemes as the person who gave the order to hire Gómez to head the IE Africa Center. He assured that his salary amounted to 55,000 euros per year in 14 payments.
During a tense interrogation, Peinado even proposed a confrontation between the two accused. Finally, he agreed that the witness return before the judge, but accompanied by a lawyer. In an order, the judge limits himself to summoning him for December 18, but specifies neither the facts which motivated his change of status nor the crimes which are indirectly attributed to him.
This is not the first time Peinado has accused a witness after hearing their answers in court. He did it with the businessman Juan Carlos Barrabés, professor of the master’s degree that Gómez directed at the Complutense University and whom he has in his sights for his public attributions of contracts linked to innovation. And also with the rector of Complutense, Joaquín Goyache, who in his two appearances denied having granted preferential treatment to Gómez and dissociated himself from the creation of the chair that the wife of the head of the Executive co-directed on the Madrid campus. As in the Güemes case, the judge did not specify what he was accusing them of.
In his last resolution, the judge also accuses the said Gil de Antuñano. Thus, he orders that her testimony be referred to another court to investigate her for the crime of disobedience for “failing to respond” to a request made to her. However, it also does not detail the content of this requirement. When he took his testimony last October, he asked him to provide documentation to which bank account the payroll received by Gómez was sent.
The accounts of Begoña Gómez
The judge’s latest move is not specifically related to any of the case’s multiple ramifications, but it does enter territory the judge had not yet crossed: Gómez’s assets. In the same judgment in which he accuses Güemes, Peinado asks the authorities for information about his bank accounts and his marriage to Pedro Sánchez. As for the first, the judge goes to the Judicial Neutral Point and asks for the list of bank accounts belonging to Gómez. As for the second, ask the civil registry for the details of your marriage, which in practice gives access to information allowing you to know if you are in a matrimonial regime or separation of property.
The judge does not explain why he is accusing Güemes or why he is requesting this data. These are common requests for information when a court needs to inquire into the assets of a person under investigation, either to investigate their accounts or to conduct an investigation in order to impose, for example for example, embargoes or bonds for a future trial. The case, in general terms, is based on suspicions of popular accusations that Gómez took advantage of her marriage to the president of the government to boost her professional career.
The other ramifications of the case are moving, for now, at a slower pace. One of them is the one that analyzes whether the businessman Barrabés took advantage of his relationship with Gómez by obtaining public contracts from the public company Red.es, which has so far been denied by the various reports from the Central Operational Unit (UCO) of the Civil Guard. A former director of the company even told Parliament that Gómez’s letters supporting the project had not influenced the awarding of the prize.
Another part of the research revolves around the two master’s degrees and the chair that Gómez directed until this year at the Complutense University. On the one hand, the judge is investigating whether the center granted preferential treatment to Gómez because she is Sánchez’s wife, which, for the moment, both the witnesses and the accused rector have denied. More recently, he opened a new separate article to analyze a complaint from HazteOir which accuses Gómez of illegally appropriating software developed for his pulpit.
