The Presidency of the Government informed Judge Juan Carlos Peñado of the trips made by the wife of the head of the executive branch, Begonia Gomez, with her advisor, Cristina Alvarez, while handing over the calendars of both, the workers’ payslips and the list of advisors to the spouses of the former leaders. The instructor sent all documents to the Central Operations Unit (UCO) of the Civil Guard to prepare a report.
It was stated in the documents, which Europa Press had access to, that Moncloa contributed to the Investigative Court No. 41 of Madrid in the line of investigation through which it is investigating whether there was a diversion of public funds in the appointment of Álvarez as presidential advisor and whether she performed special functions for Gomez within the framework of her work at the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM).
This is one line of investigation in the case in which Gomez appears to be being investigated for alleged crimes of influence peddling, business corruption, trademark misappropriation, hacking, and embezzlement.
Among the documents handed over are expenses derived from Alvarez’s presence in “presidency trips” and which “were paid from public funds from July 16, 2018 to the present date.”
A trip to Segovia and another to Granada
Specifically, there are invoices for train and plane tickets between April 2022 and September 2023 to Segovia and Granada that were managed by Viajes El Corte Inglés to the then Ministry of the Presidency and Relations with the Cortes.
According to Moncloa, there are two journeys. The first is “Madrid – Segovia – Madrid, on April 27, 2022, on the occasion of preparing the program accompanying the NATO summit held in Madrid on June 29 and 30, 2022.”
The second trip corresponds to the “Madrid-Granada-Madrid” trip, on September 6, 2023, on the occasion of the preparation of the program accompanying the third meeting of the European Political Group of the Informal European Council, held in Granada on October 5 and 6, 2023.
The Presidency also reported that Alvarez does not have an official car, and “this public employee is not among the authorities to whom the state vehicle fleet provides services due to her position.” She notes that she also has “no employees under her responsibility who are not dependent on her hierarchically or functionally.”
Calendars linked to emails
Likewise, Moncloa is known to have submitted a document in which she stated that she extracted the calendars of Begonia Gomez and Cristina Alvarez from the email server on November 26. “The extraction was carried out without any access to the contents of the mailbox, and the information was inserted into a large USB drive for storage,” the Presidency explains.
As detailed, it provides the calendar consistent with a corporate email from Gomez and two official emails from Alvarez, as the advisor was unable to continue using the first of her accounts “due to receiving excessively offensive emails.” Later, the presidency also handed over to the court the payroll that Moncloa’s advisor received from July 2018 until this November.
Finally, Moncloa informed the judge about “people who were able to carry out the tasks of caring for the spouses of prime ministers.” At this point, my husband’s counselors mention Mariano Rajoy, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, José María Aznar, and Felipe González. He adds: “It was not possible to collect information regarding the former presidents, Mr. Alfonso Suarez or Mr. Leopoldo Calvo Sotelo.”
In the same vein, he details that with regard to “the jobs they do,” they are in “all” cases “temporary staff positions.”