Judge Juan Carlos Peinado has returned to the European Public Prosecutor’s Office the separate case he opened last June within the investigation launched against Begoña Gómez, wife of the Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, to investigate businessman Juan Carlos Barrabés for alleged malfeasance and fraud against the interests of the European Union. In an order, accessed by EL PAÍS, the judge has left the investigation, which focused on a 4 million euro contract awarded in 2021 by the public company Red.es to a temporary business union (UTE) formed by Innova Next — owned by Barrabés — and the consulting firm KPMG, in the hands of the European body. This file was allegedly financed with European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) community funds.
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Peinado took this step after the Madrid Provincial Court ruled on July 13 that this matter should be excluded from the procedure because it was not part of what was being investigated in the main case. The higher court endorsed the judge continuing only with two crimes: influence peddling and embezzlement. Four days later, the European Public Prosecutor’s Office itself requested to take over the investigation. “The facts under investigation relating to the awarding of contracts paid with European funds must be understood as within the competence of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office,” the body stated in the decree of assumption to which this newspaper also had access.
Although the Madrid judge initially included Begoña Gómez in a first list of suspects in this separate case, on the day his decision became public he issued a new statement to “clarify” that the Prime Minister’s wife was not part of this line of investigation, which he activated after receiving documentation from the European Public Prosecutor’s Office with suspicions about a contract awarded to a company of Barrabés.
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During the investigations at the Madrid Court of Instruction Number 41, the Central Operative Unit (UCO) of the Civil Guard submitted a report stating that the business union of which Barrabés was part was “the most benefited bidder” due to the “arbitrariness” they observed in the contract awarding process under suspicion in this separate case. Red.es sent a letter to the Madrid Economic Crimes Prosecutor’s Office denying the existence of malfeasance or fraud in this awarding process. Sources from the Ministry of Digital Transformation, which oversees the public entity, indicated at that time to the Efe Agency that the investigated contract was not financed with European funds and argued that, therefore, it was “materially impossible for any fraud against the financial interests of the European Union to have occurred.”
Peinado did not summon Barrabés for this case nor the UCO agents who drafted the report. And now, within the framework of the resolution in which he returns the case to the European Public Prosecutor’s Office, he has warned the popular accusations and the defense of the businessman himself that he will not rule on the appeals they had filed against the decisions he made within this line of investigation.