▲ Begoña Gómez, wife of the Spanish head of government, Pedro Sánchez, and director of the chair of social transformation at the Complutense University, during the fourth Ibero-American Congress held in May 2021 at the CaixaForum, in Madrid.Photo Europa Press
Armando G. Tejeda
Correspondent
The newspaper La Jornada
Saturday, July 20, 2024, p. 24
Madrid. Begoña Gómez, wife of the Spanish Prime Minister, the socialist Pedro Sánchez, refused to testify yesterday – on the recommendation of her lawyer – in a hearing of the proceedings opened against her for alleged crimes of corruption in business and influence peddling, as a result of her business activities.
Gómez’s lawyer, former minister Antonio Camacho, advised him not to testify lack of guarantees. Judge must define what the object of the investigation is, because this is a guarantee for those under investigation, and with the delimitation that has been made, and I refer to the judge himself through the order of July 1, this procedure has been left without content.he added.
The case was initiated following a complaint filed by the far-right union Manos Limpias and was fuelled in the following weeks by reports from the Civil Guard and evidence of her professional activity in various projects, including the creation of a master’s degree at the Complutense University on the collection of public funds. The crimes of influence peddling and corruption in business, classified in the Penal Code, are attributed for the first time in history to the wife or partner of a president of the Spanish government.
The judicial process included the appearance of two senior executives of the Complutense University who were summoned to clarify the process of allocating resources for the creation of the master’s degree curriculum and, above all, why Sánchez’s wife registered in her name a computer program created by multinationals and a state-owned company and through which, allegedly, an economic benefit of more than 1.9 million pesos was achieved in the first year of its implementation.