The Central Operational Unit (UCO) of the Civil Guard stops the latest maneuver of Judge Juan Carlos Peinado to try to investigate the rescue of Air Europa within the case that continues against Begoña Gómez despite the repeated veto of the Provincial Court. In a report of just three pages, to which elDiario.es has had access, the agents conclude that there are no “new facts” that allow them to investigate the loan to the airline.
The armed institute reaches this conclusion after analyzing, at the request of the magistrate, a writing by lawyer Eduardo Martín-Duarte, known for spreading hoaxes. According to the UCO, this document contains “information of an administrative nature related to the processing of the Air Europa file that was already involved in the procedure” and is full of facts “that cannot be verified due to the absence of sources of information in this regard.”
The letter linked the wife of the President of the Government to an account and two deposits in the Dominican Republic. Furthermore, the lawyer stated that these amounts would be the “profit or benefit” derived from his alleged intervention in the rescue of Air Europa and in awards to the company Innova Next of businessman Juan Carlos Barrabés, also accused in the case. Regarding this banking information, the UCO says that “it is not possible to comment on its verisimilitude and, where appropriate, its relationship with the processing of the Air Europa file.”
The Prosecutor’s Office opposed that request considering that the magistrate intended to launch a “covert investigation” into the rescue of Air Europa. “An already voluminous case is being swelled with matters unrelated to its defined object,” said the representative of the Public Ministry, who questions that the judge is based on complaints or complaints “that have no greater mystery to investigate” to return to a matter—the rescue of Air Europa—on which the criteria “set or indicated” by the Provincial Court have.
The rescue of more than 400 million euros to Air Europa due to the effects of the pandemic is one of the great objectives of the extreme right parties and associations that exercise the popular accusation both in this process as in other open in the National Court and the Supreme Court: if the Executive rescued the Globalia company because Begoña Gómez, who knew its CEO Javier Hidalgo, interceded on behalf of the company.
One of the first decisions of the Provincial Court of Madrid in this case, in May 2024, was to give the green light to Peinado’s investigation but vetoing the proceedings on the rescue of Air Europa, which Manos Cleans had included in the complaint and which left nothing but “conjectures”. A second warning in this regard came in another car from october 2024 when the Court reiterated that the rescue of Air Europa was outside the limits of the case.
In May 2025, the Provincial Court also annulled the judge’s decision to request information from the SEPI about the aid granted to Air Europa. This decision was based on the fact that said investigation was outside the object of the investigation previously defined at the beginning of the investigation. And months later, in October, he annulled another judge’s request to the UCO to issue a report on the rescue of the airline.