The Provincial Court of Madrid has confirmed that it is sending Begoña Gómez, wife of the Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, to trial before a jury court for the crimes of embezzlement and influence peddling, both of which are competent to be tried before a popular jury.
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It partially overturns the decision of Judge Juan Carlos Peinado by removing the crimes of corruption in business and misappropriation, and overturns the precautionary measures that had been imposed, which means that her passport must be returned.
The Chamber orders that proceedings continue only against Gómez for the alleged crimes of influence peddling and embezzlement of public funds and against her advisor María Cristina Álvarez for the second crime. In addition, the case is dismissed for all regarding the crime of corruption in business.
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From the jury law procedure, the third accused, businessman Juan Carlos Barrabés, is separated, against whom the investigation will continue in an abbreviated procedure regarding the legality or illegality of the awarding of public contracts.
In addition, the court agrees to lift the personal precautionary measures agreed upon regarding the investigated parties, consisting of the prohibition to leave the country, the surrender of the passport, and the obligation to sign every fifteen days before the judicial authority, without prejudice to both being located at all times.
In this regard, the five judges explain that there is no “real probability of flight” of Gómez and Álvarez, although there are, they say, indications of criminality against both. Furthermore, they justify that by having reduced by half the crimes for which they are being prosecuted, the risk decreases.
“It cannot be affirmed that there is, with the required intensity, a real and effective risk of flight that justifies maintaining the agreed measures,” the resolution states. They explain that although she faces high prison sentences, this argument is not sufficient to set precautionary measures.
They maintain that it must be taken into account that the investigated parties have appeared at all judicial summonses made to them, “without any data allowing to infer an attitude of evasion or resistance to the action of justice.”
Likewise, they present personal, family, and professional roots in national territory, “an aspect which, according to jurisprudential doctrine, constitutes a relevant factor for assessing the risk of absconding.”
Therefore, the Court limits the trial to whether Gómez used her status as the wife of the Prime Minister to get the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM) to allow her to create a chair and whether through this a software was created with private funding.
The “moral pressure” exerted by her status as the president’s wife
For the court, there are indications that Gómez could have exerted her influence to obtain the chair. “The mere relationship of kinship by marital bond with the highest authority of the government of the Nation, in certain contexts and circumstances, such as those analyzed here, can entail effective moral pressure for the purposes of constituting the crime of influence peddling,” it holds.
The judges reject the argument of the Prosecutor’s Office and the defenses that there is no crime because there was no economic benefit. “It does not seem that it can be denied with full certainty that, given the manner and form in which the request and the immediate granting (of the chair) were made, sufficient moral pressure was exerted to move the will of the academic authority of the UCM, obtaining the decision not only to create the chair but to appoint her director.”
In this way, it would have been allowed – according to the resolution – to fund with public financing the development project of a digital measurement tool intended for personal or private use and ownership.
The chair conferred an “institutional umbrella”
“It does not make much sense to establish as an essential defensive argument the gratuitous nature of the direction of the Chair, which is formally true as accredited by the UCM, when it is beyond doubt the benefit that the creation of the Chair and her appointment as director (later co-director) entailed: personal reputational prestige of her academic career with access to multiple resources and events, relaunch of her own masters included in the Chair, which exponentially increased her income from that concept.”
And this even though it is acknowledged that the amounts obtained are “very moderate”: “from the modest 1050 euros of the year 2014-2015 or the 750 euros of the year 2015-2016 to the 14,595 of the year 2020-2021 or the 14,900 of the year 2021-2022.”
For the court, this is the key fact: “it conferred an ‘institutional umbrella,’ in the expression of her own defense, which allowed her to obtain funding, and have income to hire specialized technical services for hundreds of thousands of euros, that is, lacking effective control and without full submission to ordinary contracting procedures.”
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