OKDIARIO exclusively offered the most anticipated image of the year: Rock Sanchez testify before the judge Juan Carlos Peinado in La Moncloa in the article investigating his wife, Begoña Gómez, for influence peddling and corruption in the business world.
The President of the Government appeared on July 30 in La Moncloa before Judge Peinado, but He exercised his right not to declare citing Article 416, which establishes that ascendants, descendants, spouses or those who have an equivalent relationship to the marriageblood brothers and collaterals up to the second civil degree They are not required to report.
Judge Peinado He asked him about his relationships with the people being investigated.Begoña Gómez, the businessman Carlos Barrabés and the rector of the Complutense University of Madrid, Joaquin Goyache. Sánchez acknowledged that Gómez was his “wife,” but denied knowing the other two defendants.
In this sense, it should be noted that Carlos Barrabés, in his statement before Judge Peinado, stated that he did not have “friendly relations with Pedro Sánchez”, but He was “four or five times in Moncloa”. “I don’t know how many times I went, not many. But I must have gone four or five times. I don’t want to give an exact number. I can watch it exactly, but something like that, several times. Some because of the master’s degree and then I went to see Pedro Sánchez,” he said about it.
The businessman stated in his statement to Peinado that he met Pedro Sánchez in Benasque (Huesca) in 2015, at a meeting with businessmen, and Begoña Gómez since 2019. “I have seen her (Begoña Gómez) on several occasions because with the master we have seen each other quite a bit. “Sometimes she came to my office, other times to Moncloa where I went to see her and also at certain events,” he added in this regard before stating that when he met “Pedro Sánchez, Manuel de la Rocha was there and there was another person.”
This was Sanchez’s statement.
On July 30, Judge Peinado went to La Moncloa to question Pedro Sánchez as a witness after having request for written declaration for his status as President of the Government. The judge rejected his request and took his statement in person during a brief conversation that lasted only a few minutes. An office with white walls was set up, simulating an observation room.
The magistrate arrived in a blue car accompanied by court officials a few minutes before through the main gate of the presidential complex and, a little later, the prosecutor, the lawyers of the people investigated in the case and the lawyer who heads the people’s prosecutor’s office did so. They made them sign a confidentiality document about what was going to happen there and their cell phones were confiscated. Conditions that no citizen has when making a statement. There, María Marcos, head of security in Moncloa, supervised everything and also testified before the judge because she was the one who had collected the summons as Begoña Gómez’s investigator.
The judge and the parties were waiting for the arrival of Pedro Sánchez, who arrived in the authorized room without saying anything. “Good morning” and sat before the judge twenty minutes after the summons time. He was dressed in a blue suit and kept a serious face. The conversation with the instructor lasted only two minutes, during which Sánchez told the magistrate that Begoña Gómez was his wife. Juan Carlos Peinado asked him if he was going to testify and, twice, he repeated that he was taking advantage of his constitutional right not to do so, based on article 416 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (LECrim). Subsequently, the judge had those present sign a record of the celebration and Pedro Sánchez left the room at the door of which two of the president’s bodyguards were waiting for him.
Pedro Sánchez’s statement was recorded on video, as is customary in this type of judicial investigation. The law stipulates that interrogations must be recorded and contributed to the summary of the case so that the parties could consult the testimonies. The president was not going to be less and the judge requested that his testimony be filmed. For this, two technicians traveled the day before to set up the digital infrastructure necessary for the recording. The instructor ensured that the information was recorded before beginning the statement.
Pedro Sanchez’s video has been kept for weeks at the Court of Instruction number 41 of Madrid, which is leading the investigations into Begoña Gómez. The judge alerted the parties involved in the proceedings that he did not want there to be any leaks, which is why he has not yet handed over this recording. The video was released this Monday, September 23 at 12:00. with watermark to prevent its distribution in the media. Furthermore, it was not delivered with the rest of the video testimonies already provided in the case.
Begoña’s Statement
OKDIARIO also published last July the statement of Begoña Gómez before the judge, on July 5. Pedro Sánchez’s wife began her appearance at 10:26 and ended at 10:49.
The wife of the CEO has twice stated that she was unaware of the facts attributed to her. She came very seriously, with a black suit and sat on the edge of the bench with her back to the door. Since she did not declare herself, Judge Juan Carlos Peinado postponed the declaration until Friday, July 19. Nor did he provide any explanation of the facts being investigated. Both were brief hearings in which Begoña Gómez limited herself to saying “no” to the judge’s question about whether she knew the facts for which she was being investigated.
