The Madrid High Court will decide in the coming weeks whether or not to open an investigation for fraud against the judge Juan Carlos PeinadoThe President of the Government, via the Public Prosecution Servicehas filed a complaint accusing the magistrate investigating his wife of preventing him from testifying in writing last Tuesday and forcing his presence in Moncloa. A few months ago, the same judges rejected a complaint against Peinado for pamperingthis time accused of deliberately delaying the processing of appeals and requests for freedom from a high-ranking Venezuelan official accused of irregularities in the management of the national oil company: “It is necessary to prove the deliberate behavior – the malice – on the part of the judge,” the Madrid High Court said at the time.
Juan Carlos Peinado He has been at the helm for three months of an investigation against Begoña Gómez that was opened at the request of the pseudo-union Clean Hands. After receiving two exculpatory reports from the Guardia Civil and no investigation providing evidence of a crime, the instructor announced the summons of the President of the Government as a witness. Your objective, briefly explained in a providencewas to discover what Sánchez knew about the hypothetical influence of Begoña Gómez.
Right went to Moncloa last Tuesday with a team and with the lawyer of Vox to record the statement, but Sánchez exercised his right not to testify against his wife and the process lasted no more than two minutes. The president of the government then attacked with a complaint of fraud accuses him of perverting the law to go to the Palace to personally record and record his statement, being denied the right to do so in writing, as provided for in the regulations.
The Madrid High Court, where Juan Carlos Peinado sits, has already received the complaint from the Public Prosecutor's Office and is waiting for a decision on whether to accept the accusations and open a case against him. A decision that has been left in the hands of three judges: President Celso Rodríguez, the speaker Francisco José Goyena –who recently has requested to be attributed to the Attorney General – and Jesús María Santos. As this newspaper has been able to verify, the first two had already acquitted Peinado of a new charge of fraud less than a year ago, this time due to delays in the processing of a case involving a prisoner.
This complaint, which was declared inadmissible last September with the support of the Public Prosecution Service, was presented by Javier Alvaradoformer vice minister of the government of Venezuela and then head of a subsidiary of the Venezuelan oil company PDVSA. Alvarado denounced in his defense that Judge Peinado, the first to preside over the money laundering case before it was transferred to the National Court, had left his assets in a drawer for days while he was in provisional prison, which, according to the court's provisions, was the version confused in his malicious delaying mode.
According to the complaint of the former Venezuelan high-ranking official, which was roundly rejected without opening an investigation, several of his appeals to the court were processed several days too late: when he appealed his entry into prison without bail in May 2019 and also when they asked for a reduction of the initially imposed bail of 600,000 euros.
The Madrid High Court, with the signature of two of the three judges who will now rule on Sánchez's complaint, has chosen to dismiss these accusations against Peinado. “It is necessary to prove the intentional conduct – the malice – on the part of the judge,” the order said. The 'simple delay', such as that mentioned in some cases in the complaint of more than two weeks, “does not in itself indicate a malicious intent.”
“It's definitely not the right thing to do.”
In the case of the former high-ranking Venezuelan government official, the TSJ acknowledged that Peinado’s delays in resolving and processing appeals, skipping legal deadlines, were “certainly not correct,” but not criminal either. It was a “minimal and insubstantial delay,” and moreover, the judges did not appreciate that their partner did so intentionally.
To punish this kind of criminal delay, the TSJM went on to explain, there must be evidence that the judge’s actions “pursue an unlawful purpose.” Not only that their action is wrong, then annulled by another court, or that it serves to mitigate unnecessary delays: the criminal offense of fraud speaks of signing arbitrary resolutions “in the knowledge that they are unjust.”
This case of judicial delay in the proceedings against a preventive prisoner resulted in a reproach without criminal consequences for Peinado. The decision, as sources familiar with the case confirmed to elDiario.es, was later confirmed by a ruling of inadmissibility by the Constitutional Court. Alvarado remains accused in the National Court and The United States also claims thisaccused of money laundering and criminal organization.
Now it will be the same Madrid High Court that will decide whether his refusal to allow Pedro Sánchez to testify in writing in the case against his wife, Begoña Gómez, was also irregular and whether it crossed the criminal red line of deceit, a line that Spanish courts rarely appreciate.
Few sentences for excuses
The latest data from the Public Prosecutor’s Office show that in 2022, Spanish courts handed down around twenty sentences for judicial irregularities: just one for judicial error, another eighteen for “unjustified refusal to judge” and two more for deliberate delay. A small fraction of the nearly 20,400 sentences handed down for crimes against the administration of justice.
The cases of judges convicted of fraud in Spain are limited to cases where the actions of a magistrate have not only been irregular, but it has also been proven that their intention was clear and that they knew perfectly well that they were breaking the law. Fernando Presencia for the benefit of his friends and acquaintances in his court in Talavera to Salvador Alba to unleash a judicial hunt for Victoria Rosell Luis Pascual Estevilwho extorted businessmen in exchange for preferential treatment, or Elpidio José Silvawho illegally imprisoned banker Miguel Blesa.
In several decisions over the past decade, the Supreme Court has described it as prejudging judicial decisions made “without any reason that could be minimally acceptable.” As for the subjective component of the crime, its doctrine requires proof that he knew he was doing something illegal. In the case of Baltasar Garzóndisqualified by the Supreme Court for wiretapping conversations between Gürtel defendants and their lawyers in prison, the judges took into account as incriminating evidence that the parties warned that what he was doing was not legal: “He could not have had any doubts about it”.
The TSJM's decision on Juan Carlos Peinado and the complaint filed by the Public Prosecutor's Office will come in the coming weeks, following a report from the Public Prosecutor's Office, which opposed Sánchez's testimony but did not reveal whether it will support this criminal action.
But even Peinado need not fear an unlikely conviction. The judge, who is 70 years old, is only two years away from the cut-off date for retirement, after the CGPJ granted him permission to practice until he is 72. A verdict against him for fraud would mean only a penalty of disqualification, that is, he would not be able to continue to serve as a judge.