The defense of Begoña Gómez, wife of the President of the Government, has asked the judge handling the case to clarify what exactly he is investigating. In two briefs presented in the last few hours, his lawyer regrets that the judge “has not provided any clarity” about “the purpose of the process” and asks both about the lines of investigation at a general level and about the recent summons from the rector of the University. Complutense, Joaquín Goyache, without it being clear why he has been called to testify. All this just over a week after Gómez’s own declaration as a defendant after the European Prosecutor’s Office had claimed an important part of the case.
“My client is summoned to testify in a few days about facts of which she is unaware,” explains the lawyer and former minister Antonio Camacho in one of his appeals for reform. The defense of the wife of the President of the Government questions that in recent weeks the magistrate has made decisive decisions for the case without explaining what exactly he is investigating.
One of them is the summons of Goyache as a witness for next July 5, the same day that Gómez herself is called to testify. A summons issued from a ruling with no more arguments than “considering the state of the proceedings.” The wife of the President of the Government shared a professorship at that University with the businessman Carlos Barrabés, although the judge does not explain the reason or what he wants to investigate. That summons, Gómez laments in one of her appeals, “has not provided any clarity, quite the opposite, in relation to the purpose of the process. There is not a single judicial resolution within the procedure that determines what is being investigated.”
Goyache’s citation, he reproaches in one of his writings, is “incomprehensible” given that, according to his criteria, “it is in no way related to the facts that constituted the object of the investigation. Research that, we must reiterate, has not been expressly expanded by the Instructor at any time.” All of this, Begoña Gómez’s defense understands, affects her right to effective judicial protection: “It is impossible to know what the Court considers to be the subject of investigation in this case,” he denounces.
In its two appeals, Gómez’s defense recalls that general or prospective investigations are not allowed, although it states that “it is not unusual” for a criminal procedure to begin like this: “With the excuse of investigating a certain criminal act, in reality, it “What they are looking for is to inspect the life of the person being investigated to see if other crimes can be discovered.”
He also makes these statements in a second appeal in which he complains that the judge has not clarified which blocks he is investigating after the two major milestones of the case: the transfer of part of the proceedings to the European Prosecutor’s Office and the order of the Court of Madrid that limits the limits of the investigation.
The judge’s last writing, Gómez’s lawyer reproaches, “does not clarify at all an essential element of all criminal proceedings, which is the set of facts that are attributed to the only person who was subject to investigation.” And he understands that the magistrate continues to investigate blocks that the Madrid Provincial Court itself understood were based on “conjectures” from the Manos Cleans complaint.
Declaration on the fifth of July
Begoña Gómez is called to testify as under investigation on Friday of next week. A statement in a case that began as a result of a complaint from Clean Hands that provided various press clippings on various aspects of the professional activity of the wife of the President of the Government: especially the letters of recommendation that she wrote, together with organizations such as the Madrid City Council, in favor of a joint venture led by businessman Carlos Barrabés, as well as an alleged favorable treatment for Air Europa in its million-dollar rescue.
The Provincial Court of Madrid endorsed the opening of proceedings but understood that Manos Cleans’ suspicions about Gómez’s alleged role in the rescue of Air Europa were based on “conjectures”, and urged that the case be directed to the public contracts that the UTE led by Barrabés obtained from the public company Red.es.
Shortly after, it was the European Prosecutor’s Office that demanded to keep the most relevant part of the case, understanding that it could affect community funds: those public awards to Barrabés, seriously ill and hospitalized, whom the judge also plans to interrogate. Since then, Gómez’s defense has addressed the magistrate on several occasions to ask what exactly he is investigating ahead of his statement on Friday of next week.
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