The wife of the Spanish prime minister is under criminal investigation amid accusations of corruption and influence peddling, according to unsealed court documents.
Begoña Gómez, the wife of Pedro Sánchez, was the subject of a preliminary investigation by a Spanish court into whether she had committed a crime in business in her private dealings.
The court did not provide further details at the time in April because the case was sealed and preliminary, saying only that it was following up on a complaint raised by an anti-corruption campaign group called Manos Limpias (which means Clean Hands).
When the investigating judge agreed to examine the complaint last month, Mr Sánchez took a five-day break from official duties to consider resigning.
On Tuesday, documents from the investigation seen by several Spanish media outlets say that Judge Juan Carlos Peinado has given Ms Gómez the status of “investigada”.
This means that the judge believes there is credible evidence of her having committed a crime or having participated in it.
The news is likely to reignite the political storm surrounding the case, which Mr Sánchez’s Left-wing government says is a plot led by the opposition and client media to oust him.
The case against Ms Gómez rests on a series of articles in newspapers, which formed the basis of Manos Limpias’ complaint.
Manos Limpias, whose leader has links to the far Right, later caveated these allegations by saying they may have been based on fake news, local media reported.
On Thursday it emerged that investigators from the Guardia Civil police force had not found any evidence of wrongdoing by Ms Gómez. The public prosecutor also informed Judge Peinado that it was their view that the prime minister’s wife had no case to answer.
The Guardia Civil said there was no evidence to suggest that Ms Gómez’s alleged ties with the Spanish tourism group Globalia, which owns the airline Air Europe, had influenced the government’s decision to award the airline emergency funding during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Spain’s main conservative opposition People’s Party has demanded that Mr Sánchez offer explanations as to why he did not recuse himself from decisions involving companies with a connection to Ms Gómez’s professional activities.
Leading members of Mr Sánchez’s Socialist Party (PSOE) urged the prime minister to stay in his post during his five-day period of isolation.
María Jesús Montero, Spain’s finance minister and the PSOE number two, said on Thursday that the judge had decided to open an investigation into Ms Gómez based on mere newspaper cuttings containing “fake news”.