Businessman linked to legal case against the wife of the President of Spain testifies

Armando G. Tejeda

Correspondent

The newspaper La Jornada
Tuesday, July 16, 2024, p. 23

Madrid. Spanish businessman Juan Carlos Barrabés testified before Madrid judge Juan Carlos Peinado in relation to the case opened for alleged crimes of corruption in business and influence peddling against Begoña Gómez, wife of the president of the government, the socialist Pedro Sánchez.

Barrabés, a friend and business partner of the suspect, acknowledged that he met at least twice with Sánchez and his wife in La Moncloa, but denied that these meetings were related to his business and the more than 20 million euros (360 million pesos) of public contracts.

Peinado has admitted to processing a complaint by the far-right union Manos Limpias against Begoña Gómez, relating to her professional activities through the businessman Barrabés and the Complutense University of Madrid, where she created a master’s course in business and developed a business strategy plan to promote in Africa. The judicial investigation, which is in its initial phase, places Barrabés as one of the key players in the educational and business plan of the president’s wife, in addition to other Spanish executives, such as the president of Air Europa, Javier Hidalgo, and the commissioner linked to this Spanish airline, Víctor de Aldama.

Barrabés’ testimony is one of the most important in the initial phase of the process, in which data is being collected and some of the evidence provided by the Civil Guard and the prosecution is being compared. The businessman was hospitalised due to a serious illness, which is why his appearance, which was scheduled to take place in a hospital, was delayed for a few days, but he was finally able to appear in court on his own.

He revealed that maintained between five and eight meetings in Moncloa with Gómez and that Pedro Sánchez attended two of them in person. The president of the government left one of the meetings after receiving a phone call. According to the businessman, the objective of these meetings was to talk about innovation and they would have taken place in post-pandemic erathe prosecution lawyers said, adding that Manuel de la Rocha, then Secretary General and now Secretary of State of the Department of Economic Affairs and G-20 in the Presidential Cabinet, was present at one of the aforementioned meetings..

During the testimony, neither the Attorney General’s Office, which requested the case be closed because it was considered unjustified, nor Gómez’s defense, represented by the former Secretary of State for Security Antonio Camacho, asked about the businessman’s case. Gómez is scheduled to testify on the 19th.