Begoña Gómez’s statement last Friday was postponed after her lawyer claimed not to be aware of the complaint for influence peddling filed by Hazte Oír against the wife of the President of the Government. A complaint, the lawyer complained, about which he had not even been notified of the admission for processing, the judicial resolution that allows the parties involved in the case to know under what terms the instructor rejects or admits, at least partially, a complaint and incorporates it into a judicial procedure already underway. Now, Begoña Gómez and her lawyer have less than two weeks, barely twelve days, to analyze this complaint about which Judge Juan Carlos Peinado had already warned, three days before the date set for the appearance of the person under investigation, that it included “new facts that could be worthy of being investigated.”
This complaint is therefore not surprising, insofar as Hazte Oír already reported the facts to the State Attorney General’s Office on April 8, one day before Manos Limpias took the matter to the Plaza de Castilla courts, which would lead the magistrate to open proceedings on April 16, causing Pedro Sánchez to threaten to resign and announce that he was stepping aside for five days from public life to reflect on a possible dismissal, which ultimately did not happen.
But since the complaint to the Attorney General’s Office, which ended up sending it to the Madrid Prosecutor’s Office one day after Peinado opened proceedings, ended with a decree of archiving, Hazte Oír – which together with Vox, Manos Limpias, Iustitia Europa and the Movement for Political Regeneration of Spain – filed the complaint (in reality that same expanded complaint) in Peinado’s court.
But what facts does this complaint allege against Begoña Gómez? The document accuses her of having allegedly “taken advantage” of “her status as the wife of the President of the Government to establish commercial and professional relations with various companies and entities”, for which she would have taken advantage of being part of “the entourage accompanying” the head of the Executive “on several official trips”.
“From her positions and jobs, she has been able to offer (due to the concurrence between her personal relationships and the granting of aid) to influence her own husband, as President of the Government, for the granting of subsidies and public aid,” adds the complaint, which also refers to “unrefuted” journalistic information about Begoña Gómez’s “recommendation letters” for administrative files for the granting of competitions, in reference to the businessman Juan Carlos Barrabés, promoter of her master’s degree at the Complutense University and who is summoned to testify on the 15th.
In addition to referring to the controversial master’s degree on Competitive Social Transformation and a second one on “fundraising” for NGOs, including – it stresses – “funds from the European Union distributed by the Spanish government itself”, the complaint refers to its links with the Globalia Group and its possible impact on the rescue of Air Europa, a branch of the investigation that the Provincial Court of Madrid reduced to mere “conjectures” in the resolution in which it rejected the request for archiving by the Prosecutor’s Office and endorsed Peinado’s investigation, redirecting it to the awards to Barrabés’ company.
Links with Globalia
The complaint states that at the beginning of 2020, Air Europa “signed a confidential contract with the IE Africa Center headed by Begoña Gómez, through which the company Wakalua” – created on January 22, 2019 between Globalia and the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) – agreed to pay the study center 40,000 euros per year. For the plaintiff association, given that “at that time the Globalia Group was going through a difficult economic time”, the operation is “very suspicious” because according to its criteria “it gathers indications of serving to obtain “the influence” of the defendant in other operations”.
Since June 2019, when Begoña Gómez came into contact with the Globalia Group – the complaint states – until she left the Instituto de Empresa in June 2022, “the Globalia Group received treatment from the Government that can be described as privileged” because during that period Globalia, Air Europa and Avoris, “all belonging to the Hidalgo family”, “received 1.1 billion euros from the Government in guarantees, loans and aid”.
Hazte Oír maintains in the complaint that it is “evident” that Begoña Gómez’s trips “as the wife of the President of the Government” sometimes involved “a collision and confusion of interests that appear to fit the types of crimes reported.”
Regarding Barrabés, he states that he “put Begoña Gómez in contact” with Air Europa in 2019 and “later designed, looked for professors and filled with content the Master in Competitive Social Transformation” of the Complutense University that was co-directed by Pedro Sánchez’s wife.
The Barrabés consultancy firm, the complaint states, “cultivated its relations with Begoña Gómez while its turnover with the Government grew from half a million euros during the Mariano Rajoy years to more than 20 million under Pedro Sánchez, almost 3,900% more.” According to the complainant association, since Begoña Gómez endorsed Barrabés in writing in both contracts, in July 2020, the Government has awarded Barrabés contracts worth 18,684,584 euros.
In addition to the contracts awarded to Barrabés that are now being investigated by the European Prosecutor’s Office, for being partially funded by EU funds, the complaint also refers to Transforma TSC, the company created by Begoña Gómez in November 2023, “of which she is the sole administrator, and which aims to promote and promote the Competitive Social Transformation strategy”. And it recalls that the Complutense University of Madrid contracted the development of a website “to capture data from potential clients under the Transforma TSC brand”, a contract that cost 60,500.00 euros plus VAT.