The chair co-directed at the Complutense University by the wife of the Prime Minister, Begoña Gómez, was created following the established regulations and there are no opaque incomes in the accounts of the Prime Minister’s wife. This is the main conclusion that the UCO points out in its report on the case being investigated by Judge Peinado, which has brought Pedro Sánchez’s wife to the brink of trial.
The police report, accessed by La Vanguardia, states that the chair “is supported by different collaborators,” all of which is “in accordance with the provisions of the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM) regarding extraordinary chairs and the common regulations applicable to the University.” And regarding the accounts of the person under investigation, “the banking information matches the development of the professional activities that Begoña Gómez has been carrying out, insofar as the entities with which she has been professionally linked (…) correspond to the main payers identified,” affirms the UCO.
In the first case, that of the creation of the chair, the digital platform for management and measurement of sustainability objectives for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), developed within the scope of the Chair, was questioned. But regarding this software, which the judge used to justify charges of embezzlement and mismanagement, the UCO concludes that “no elements have been identified from which it can be inferred that the project leaders followed the protocol established by the UCM for the registration of products likely to generate intellectual property rights.”
Furthermore, “there are other parallel procedures such as the registration of the trademark created within the framework of the platform’s development and the domain registration aimed at hosting public access to the tool (…) subject to an internal protocol, with no elements available to infer compliance by Begoña Gómez and Blanca de Juan – coordinator of the chair – as those responsible for management.”
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Thus, the cited report questions some of the main indications pointed out by Judge Peinado against the person under investigation, asserting that the extraordinary chair under investigation was created following the legal channels established by the UCM and that the software created for it was funded by various companies that always knew the money they paid was for the Complutense and not for Gómez.
The UCO also rejects the possibility of opaque payments, commissions, or illicit economic movements in Gómez’s accounts. Although the Prime Minister’s wife invoiced the university 17,000 euros over two years, this is considered an “incompatible” amount with personal illicit enrichment. The report “addresses the issue of possible personal benefit by Begoña from the developed tool and the link unrelated to the Complutense,” but “the costs whose origin could be verified were covered with funds from Gómez’s personal sphere.”
The report even exempts the advisor to the Prime Minister’s wife from some of the responsibilities attributed to her. According to the UCO, “there are no detailed descriptions of calls to in-person or videoconference meetings in which Begoña Gómez participates, nor management emails that do not directly involve a task assigned to Cristina Álvarez, of which various examples have been included in the Report of facts related to the chair.”
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