Judge Peinado fines Begoña Gómez's lawyer 5,000 euros for making statements to the press.

Juan Carlos Peinado has returned to the Moncloa Palace seven and a half months later. This time, the second time, he is to take a statement from Félix Bolaños as a witness in the investigation against Begoña Gómez. The judge of Madrid's 41st Court of Instruction had already visited the palace at the end of July to question Pedro Sánchez.

due to his personal connection to the person under investigation, who is his wife. The Minister of the Presidency, Justice and Parliamentary Relations cannot hide behind this in the face-to-face meeting he held this Wednesday morning with Peinado. On the same day that the investigating judge in the case interrogated Bolaños, another controversial decision came to light.



Peinado imposed a €5,000 fine on Gómez's lawyer, former Socialist minister Antonio Camacho, for making statements to the press following the declaration of Sánchez's wife as a person under investigation on December 18 of last year. Peinado considers that there was "an excess in his behavior with respect to the exercise of his right to defense by transmitting what must be kept secret." The judge also fined two of the popular accusations, Vox and Hazte Oír, €500, also for having made statements.

The fine is lesser because they made them after Camacho, which "tempers the offense," in the judge's opinion. Bolaños' declaration What motivates Peinado to question Bolaños? The controversial judge's justification—a target of the Spanish government, which believes he is using this case to carry out a "ruthless political persecution" against Sánchez—is that he authorized the hiring of Cristina Álvarez, Gómez's advisor also under investigation by Peinado. The judge sees a possible crime of embezzlement.

Peinado's decision came after former Deputy Secretary of the Presidency Alfredo González Gómez, in a statement also as a witness at the end of February, presented a list of between 80 and 90 candidates for various positions when Sánchez took office in 2018. Álvarez's name was included in this list, and he said he had not previously met her. He also failed to say who had given him the list and claimed that he had simply raised the proposal to hire Gómez's advisor to his superior, who clarified, in response to questions from the popular accusations, that it was precisely Bolaños when he was in charge of the General Secretariat of the Presidency between July 2018 and the same month of 2019.

Peinado denied Bolaños the possibility of making a written statement, as stipulated in the criminal procedure law for members of the government. Peinado traveled to Moncloa Palace in an official car provided by the Spanish government. He requested it himself, because when he went to question Sánchez, he was held "significantly longer than necessary to allow him access.

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