Begoña Gómez testified this Tuesday at the headquarters of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office in Madrid and explained that she never spoke with anyone from the Government about the public contracts awarded to companies of the businessman Juan Carlos Barrabés, according to legal sources reported to EL PAÍS. The wife of the head of the Executive was summoned as a witness in a new round of statements to clarify whether any irregularity occurred in the awards that the public entity Red.es (which depends on the Ministry of Digital Transformation and Public Function) granted for an amount of 8.4 million euros to a group of companies including Innova Next (of Barrabés). This businessman and the director of Digital Economy of Red.es, Luis Prieto, remain under investigation in this case, which runs parallel to the one before a Madrid court judge Juan Carlos Peinado regarding Gómez’s activities.
Read more I try the best ‘smartwatches’ for kids and tell you which one is my favorite
The European Public Prosecutor’s Office opened this case in 2024 as part of a split from the investigation led by Peinado, who has recently charged Begoña Gómez with four corruption offenses. The Luxembourg-based body is investigating the awarding of two contracts —“Youth employment training for the digital economy” and “Training service for unemployed people”— that were awarded to a Temporary Business Union (UTE) formed by Innova Next and The Valley Digital Business School, and were funded with European funds. For this, it had summoned both Pedro Sánchez’s wife and all the signatories of recommendation letters that were attached to the Red.es file, through which these companies achieved a better rating in the subjective part of the offer and ended up winning the contract.
The proceedings under the leadership of prosecutors Laura Pellón, Antonio Zárate, and Luis Miguel Jiménez focus, therefore, on the subjective evaluation made of those contracts, according to legal sources, and there is no suspicion of wrongdoing regarding Gómez or the other signatories of letters who have been witnesses. This Tuesday, the interrogation of Sánchez’s wife focused on what her relationship with Barrabés was, how they met, and how their meetings went. She, in line with what she has already stated in court, explained that she did not remember the exact moment she met the businessman, which was at some sustainability event. She said they were not friends, that their relationship was “only professional” and that if she had a meeting with him it was always within the framework of the extraordinary chair at the Complutense University that Gómez co-directed. The president’s wife explained that she had appointments with Barrabés as with the other six professors who taught in the master’s program, because she had to submit a teaching plan to the university for approval.
Regarding the two declarations of interest and support (in the form of letters) signed by Gómez within the awarding file, she explained that she did not even remember signing them until they appeared in the press and that she never knew if, in the end, Barrabés had been awarded the contract or not. The prosecutors asked if she talked about this matter with the then Secretary of State for Digitalization, Carme Artigas, or with the former Vice President and former Minister of Finance Nadia Calviño. They also asked her about her relationship with the director general of Red.es, then David Cierco, and with the subsequent director general, Alberto Martínez Lacambra. Gómez denied having spoken about these contracts with anyone from the Government, not even with Barrabés himself.
The testimony of Sánchez’s spouse closes a new round of testimonies, in which, for example, the former director of Red.es David Cierco was also summoned. More than twenty witnesses have appeared before the Prosecutor’s Office. The Central Operative Unit (UCO) of the Civil Guard presented a report a few months ago in which it exposed internal messages from Red.es workers that supported the thesis of the European prosecutors that there may have been irregularities in the evaluation of the files that ended with the awards, and it was following this police report that the prosecutors carried out this new round of summons.
Read more I try the latest eReaders and rank them from best to worst
An expert from the General Intervention of the State Administration (IGAE) —dependent on the Ministry of Finance— also presented a report last August in which it detected that the discretionary evaluation had been “arbitrary” and had “exceeded” in favor of the UTE of Barrabés, whose score had been “unjustly and illegally increased,” harming the other competitors. As EL PAÍS reported, the guarantees judge of the National Court Antonio Piña intervened in favor of Barrabés so that the delegated prosecutors agreed to carry out a complete expert examination to determine whether the formula used to resolve Barrabés’ public tenders was “tampered with” or, in fact, was the one used in all procedures. This point is therefore key to knowing whether the public entity dependent on the Ministry of Digital Transformation engaged in favoritism with Barrabés, the reason why he is under investigation.
A double case for Barrabés
The businessman Juan Carlos Barrabés is involved in a double judicial procedure. On one hand, the judge of the Instruction Court number 41 of Madrid, Juan Carlos Peinado, accuses him of influence peddling and corruption in business related to the creation of the extraordinary chair of Begoña Gómez at the Complutense University of Madrid. The judge says that Barrabés helped the creation of this training, despite the fact that his companies did not contribute money as others did. The magistrate describes as a kind of consideration the fact that Begoña Gómez signed the two letters sent to Red.es, although there were another thirty entities that also sent these letters. One of them, the Madrid City Council, which also awarded contracts to Barrabés’ company.
The European Public Prosecutor’s Office keeps Barrabés under investigation, in this case, specifically for the awards. His defense has argued in several appeals to judge Peinado that he is being subjected to a double procedure for the same facts.
Read more An explosion at a fireworks factory in China causes at least 21 deaths