Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has begun proceedings against the judge who is investigating his wife for alleged corruption and influence-peddling, accusing him of misusing his judicial office.
News of the proceedings emerged on Tuesday afternoon, just hours after Sánchez invoked his legal right not to testify in a case concerning the business activities of his wife, Begoña Gómez.
Gómez is being investigated for alleged corruption and influence-peddling after a complaint by the pressure group Manos Limpias (Clean Hands), a self-styled trade union with far-right links that has a long history of using the courts to pursue political targets.
Manos Limpias has accused Gómez of using her influence as the wife of the prime minister to secure sponsors for a university master’s degree course that she ran.
Although prosecutors in Madrid have asked the court to throw out the case for lack of evidence – and a report by the Guardia Civil police force found no indication of criminal activity by Gómez – the investigation is proceeding.
Despite describing the allegations against his wife as baseless, politically motivated smears, Sánchez had offered to provide written evidence to the judge, Juan Carlos Peinado.
But Peinado insisted on questioning Sánchez in person at his official residence, the Moncloa palace in Madrid, where the prime minister exercised his right not to testify in a case relating to a family member.
Early on Tuesday afternoon, the government announced that the state attorney’s office had filed a lawsuit against Peinado on the grounds of alleged abuse of office.
At the centre of the complaint is what it terms Peinado’s “unfair” and “deliberate” decision to insist on in-person testimony in Moncloa, rather than allowing Sánchez to submit written evidence, as the law permits high-ranking officials to do. Peinado has said the testimony needed to be given in person at Moncloa because he wanted to question Sánchez as Gómez’s spouse, rather than as prime minister.
“This isn’t an attempt to suggest that someone should not be investigated within our legal system; it is about the way in which the investigation is pursued,” said the suit. “In this specific case, the investigation is being directed to ends that are far from judicial, and in such a way that decisions are being made not for summary reasons, but for exaggerated effect.”
The suit argued that Peinado could not seek to question Sánchez solely in his capacity as Gómez’s husband because the entire investigation is based on what Gómez is alleged to have done as the wife of the prime minister.
“One person cannot be separated out, and it cannot be claimed that a person is going to be questioned as a husband when the determining feature of the investigation is, as we have said, the fact that the husband of the person under investigation is the prime minister,” it said.
The complaint also stressed that the suit was “not an attack on judicial power” but rather an effort to protect the office of the prime minister from arbitrary legal onslaughts.
“This lawsuit is intended to respect the independence of the judiciary, but also to defend it from the practices of those who operate for political motives and outside the law,” said the government’s spokesperson, Pilar Alegría.
Sánchez, who has described the case against his wife as “an ugly fit-up driven by the far-right groups behind the complaint,” paused his public duties for five days at the end of April while he considered whether he wanted to continue in office because of what he termed the “harassment and bullying operation” he and his wife were enduring. He decided to stay on as prime minister.
