What is the judge investigating today in the case against Begoña Gómez? Only Juan Carlos Peinado has an answer to that question, after the Madrid Court ruled out two of the three blocks in which the judge was investigating based on a complaint from Manos Cleans and that the third, on the awards that the businessman received Juan Carlos Barrabés, has become the responsibility of the European Prosecutor’s Office.
And yet, Juan Carlos Peinado keeps secret part of the case for alleged influence peddling and corruption in business while he undertakes outrageous investigations with publicity, such as finding out who put his signature in the Moncloa Palace on the receipt of Begoña’s summons. Gómez to testify as a defendant.
This Tuesday, an order issued last Friday was known in which the judge accepted the invocation presented by the European Prosecutor’s Office and inhibited itself from investigating the central part of the complaint against Gómez, that is, the contracts awarded by a public company to businessman Juan Carlos Barrabés, whose offer included a letter signed by Gómez. The European Public Prosecutor’s Office is competent to investigate this case because the money comes from the European Union.
The judge has informed the parties of the delivery of that part of the investigation to the European Prosecutor’s Office in a document in which he only expresses the operative part of the order, which includes the decision he adopts, but not his reasoning. If we add to that the judge’s erratic writing style, the confusion is total. Begoña Gómez’s defense has sent a letter to the court in which he asks the magistrate to inform him what he is currently investigating.
Peinado had written in the operative part of his order that he accepts the invocation of the European Prosecutor’s Office for the facts “related to the award of contracts financed with European funds by the public entity Red.es to the UTE Innova Next SLU [propiedad de Barrabés] and The Valley Business School.” Next, he added: “Without prejudice to the irregularities linked to the previous events that could constitute criminal offenses and in which European funds were affected.” Does that last sentence mean that if there are other signs of a crime you will investigate them? If they are European funds, it would also be the responsibility of the European Prosecutor’s Office.
Furthermore, everything other than contracts from European funds had already been left out of the case. On April 16, Peinado opened preliminary proceedings based on a complaint from Manos Médicas that included seven press reports and a hoax from a digital newspaper. Some of this information alluded to the alleged mediation of Begoña Gómez in the rescue of Air Europa in exchange for alleged perks for one of the organizations with which he collaborates that later never materialized. But the Provincial Court, in responding to the Prosecutor’s appeal against Peinado’s investigation, established that neither the hoax of a subsidy to the president’s wife who was actually a Cantabrian businesswoman with the same name, nor anything related to the airline they went from being “mere conjectures”.
Therefore, if the European Public Prosecutor’s Office has been in charge of reviewing the contracts with Barrabés and the rest of the Manos Médicas complaint should not be investigated, why doesn’t Peinado close the case? This confusion has led Gómez’s lawyer to present a brief to the court in which he appeals to his client’s right to defense and, therefore, to request that it be “clarified which are the facts that currently make up the case that “It remains the jurisdiction of the present court.”
The answer lies in the secrecy that the judge maintains over a separate piece. But his use of his power to declare the proceedings secret – for all parties but not for the Prosecutor’s Office – was already questioned in this case by the Provincial Court of Madrid. In the same order in which they established limits on Peinado’s investigation, the judges of the higher instance ordered him to lift the secrecy of the proceedings, although the magistrate had done so shortly before after the publication of the content of the report that he had ordered to the Civil Guard, and in which evidence of crime on the part of Begoña Gómez was also ruled out.
The judges of the Madrid Court explained that the secrecy that Peinado decreed regarding her actions made no sense, since she had informed Gómez of the investigation that was weighing on her and, therefore, she had thus recognized that there was no danger of destruction of evidence or obstruction of the case.
The Mystery PD
What the judge has clearly reported is his interest in knowing who owns the signature with which the notification from the court to cite her as being investigated was received at the residence of Begoña Gómez, in the Palace of La Moncloa. next July 5th. As the judge himself describes in an order, someone wrote “PD” and then “an illegible signature.”
That expression refers to “By Delegation” and the signature, as has been learned elDiario.es, is by Antonio Camacho, Gómez’s lawyer who was there preparing his defense. Judge Peinado is going to have the head of security at the La Moncloa Palace appear as a witness to clarify the mystery.
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