Alberto Núñez Feijóo has already issued a ruling on the Begoña Gómez case. During the plenary session of Congress on Wednesday, the news emerged that the Complutense University had asked Judge Juan Carlos Peinado to investigate the activity of the president’s wife in a university master’s degree. The leader of the PP showed a printed copy of an article with that information and went on to affirm that this was already game, set and match. “Go to your office and write the third and final letter,” he said to Pedro Sánchez. It is assumed that he was referring to the letter of resignation.
The Complutense has been the last extra ball in the case. What began with aid to Air Europa then moved on to letters of recommendation signed by Gómez, several companies and the Madrid City Council. That was the moment when the matter reached Peinado’s court with a complaint from the ultra-right group Manos Limpias, which compiled the articles already published. The last leap is a university master’s degree for company executives for which Gómez received the gigantic sum of 6,817 euros. And this is where the story begins to smell not so good.
On Friday, Begoña Gómez was summoned to testify in court. Following her lawyer’s advice, she invoked her right not to testify, as provided for in the Constitution. To put it in simple terms, an accused is not obliged in a democracy to collaborate with those who want to put him in jail. The idea is that the accusations prove that he is guilty, not that the accused proves his innocence. Not testifying in the investigation of a case is usually the smartest alternative. You cannot claim to have done something if you choose not to talk.
That is not what the Popular Party believes. “He who fears nothing, does not fear to respond” “to the questions of a judge,” said Borja Sémper, who happens to have a degree in law. “Those who fear nothing, fear nothing when it comes to answering the questions of the opposition.”
Sémper was not the only one. Several PP deputies considered that the decision of Gómez and his lawyer was an admission of guilt. “If there is nothing to hide, “Why continue avoiding giving explanations?” wrote Elías Bendodo. “The saying goes that silence gives consent…” said Eduardo Carazo. Wherever there are proverbs, the Constitution should be removed.
Antonio Camacho, Gómez’s lawyer, told reporters outside the courts that the judicial investigation into Peinado no longer makes sense after the Madrid Provincial Court ruled that there are only indications that can be investigated in the contracts that have been sent to the European Prosecutor’s Office. “Our position is that, following the Provincial Court’s ruling, this procedure has no purpose at this time,” said Camacho, who also mentioned the two reports from the UCO that found no evidence of a crime.
The PP never refers to these reports in its statements on the case. If it were to reject them, it would be questioning the work of the Civil Guard and does not dare to get involved in that area. All its hopes are placed on Peinado. It cannot be denied that the magistrate is aiming for the highest. He has said in writing that he intends to investigate Begoña Gómez for everything she has done since 2018 when her husband was elected president of the Government. He will think that six years is a long time and that he can catch anything if his rod is long enough. But do not call it a prospective investigation, because that is not permitted by law.
In the latest twist in the case, the one who has been exposed has been the Complutense. It tried to appear in the case as a private prosecutor and the judge said no because it had not been proven that it had been harmed. It asked Gómez for information about the master’s degree that he directed and waited. Before receiving it, it asked the judge again on July 1 to appear with a twenty-page document. That was the message Feijóo spoke about in Congress and that appeared in many headlines.
The text included the admission that no evidence of a crime had been found in relation to Begoña Gómez. “The investigative activities do not allow us to reach a definitive conclusion regarding the existence, or not, of damage to her assets,” the text said. In other words, we have not found anything illegal, but it would be good if the judge could give us a hand and look for something that justifies our appearing in the investigation as an injured party. Injured in what way? They don’t know.
Some headlines had reported that Gómez had registered software in his name that could belong to the Complutense. His statement reveals that, after contacting the Intellectual Property Registry, he discovered that neither Gómez nor his company have registered that software in their name.
This Friday, it was revealed that there was indeed a registration, but of a different type, that of a dot org internet domain. Contrary to what the Complutense says that it knew nothing about it until it was published in the media, an email sent by the Patent Management Department of the university confirms the opposite. In the communication, it is explained to Gómez – regarding the steps that must be taken in order to register the domain – that “the RTPI (Territorial Registry of Intellectual Property) is strictly in charge of registering the web page, literary/scientific work, multimedia, etc.” Beyond the importance of this information and the fact that the software was intended for companies to use for free, what is clear is that this management was not done behind the back of the Complutense.
The day after the letter was sent, Gómez wanted to hand over to the university the documents that had been requested. It was about time, the vice-chancellor who heads the monitoring committee dealing with the case might have said (Gómez’s father had died shortly before). Quite the opposite. He didn’t want to know anything. Suddenly, he had lost interest in the information he had requested and he was doing so for very questionable reasons. He replied that there was a judicial investigation underway, so he didn’t want to interfere. This was unusual, because at least he could have received it and sent it to the court.
The truth is that there is no open investigation in court into whether Gómez caused any financial damage to the Complutense. If this were the case, the judge would have already accepted that the university should appear in the investigation as a private prosecutor.
The Complutense’s actions are more than suspicious. It is doing everything possible to not appear to be helping Begoña Gómez. Here it must be remembered that this university is in a very difficult economic situation, like the other Madrid centres. It has already informed its faculties that They must cut their expenses by 30%. Isabel Díaz Ayuso’s government holds the key to the money and is the one that invests the least per student in Spain.
It is known that the Madrid government is not at all happy with the performance of the rector of the Complutense, Joaquín Goyache. It is curious because the PP supported his election believing that his main rival was a leftist, specifically a Podemos supporter. But now it hopes that he will be a key piece in the offensive against Gómez and will not stop putting pressure on him in this regard.
The tweets of Miguel Angel Rodriguez, who does not stop announcing that the president’s wife will end up in prison Like Sanchez’s brother, they leave him quite clear. She does this in revenge for the investigation that showed that Díaz Ayuso’s boyfriend had committed tax crimes, acknowledged by his lawyer.
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