Judge Peinado reverses course and returns the investigation into Barrabés for the Red.es contract to the European Public Prosecutor's Office.

The controversial judge Juan Carlos Peinado has returned to the European Public Prosecutor's Office the investigation opened against businessman Juan Carlos Barrabés for possible irregularities in a Red.es award. The magistrate has archived "without further procedure" the separate piece he opened in June within the 'Begoña Gómez case' and leaves the investigation in the hands of the community body.

Peinado made the decision after the Provincial Court of Madrid left this contract out of the popular jury procedure against Begoña Gómez. Four days after that resolution, the European Public Prosecutor's Office demanded to take over an investigation that it considers to be within its competence due to the possible use of European funds.

Pedro Sánchez's wife is completely outside this line. The judge himself initially included her in a list of investigated persons, although he had to clarify the next day that the piece was directed solely against Barrabés. In this file, there is also no letter of recommendation signed by Begoña Gómez, unlike what happened in other contracts awarded to companies of the same businessman.

The suspicions about the Red.es contract

The investigation focuses on the file for the Pyme Accelerate Office service, awarded in 2021 to the temporary union formed by Innova Next, owned by Barrabés, and the consulting firm KPMG. The tender started with a base budget of 4,053,500 euros and ended up being awarded for 2,149,200 euros.

The Central Operative Unit of the Civil Guard placed the main suspicions on the valuation of the offers. According to its report, the UTE would not have included a white paper required in the specifications and that absence would have been deliberately hidden in the valuation documents to prevent it from being detected by the other bidders.

The agents reached that conclusion after analyzing the emails exchanged by the evaluators. The UCO maintains that the candidacy of Innova Next and KPMG was "the most benefited bidder" by the "arbitrariness" observed during the procedure.

Red.es has denied that there were crimes of prevarication or fraud and the Ministry of Digital Transformation defended that the contract lacked European funding. The European Public Prosecutor's Office maintains the opposite criterion and considers that the possible affectation of community funds grants it the competence to investigate the facts.

A piece that Peinado barely investigated

The file had previously passed through the European Public Prosecutor's Office. An appeal by Barrabés' defense led the guarantee judge of the National Court to order the documentation to be returned to Peinado, who then decided to open a separate proceeding to investigate possible crimes of prevarication and fraud against the interests of the Union.

The situation changed when the Provincial Court of Madrid left Barrabés out of the future jury trial. The magistrates concluded that there were not enough indications to seat him on the bench as author, co-author or necessary collaborator of a crime of influence peddling, although they allowed other proceedings to continue in an independent piece.

That separation allowed the European Public Prosecutor's Office to again claim the award of Red.es. Peinado now accepts that the knowledge of the facts corresponds to the community body and will not take a statement for this piece from either Barrabés or the UCO agents who prepared the report.

The magistrate will also not resolve the appeals filed by the defense and the popular accusations against the decisions he adopted during these weeks. The investigation into this award leaves the Instruction Court number 41 of Madrid and will continue under the direction of the European prosecutors.