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June 20 (UPI) — Begona Gomez, the wife of Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, had her passport revoked on Saturday because a judge said she is a flight risk ahead of her trial on corruption charges.
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Gomez is alleged to have exploited her position in Spain’s government to obtain a position at the Complutense University of Madrid and used public money for her own private interests, Politico, El Pais and The New York Times reported.
In barring Gomez from leaving the country, Judge Juan Carlos Peinado also is requiring her to appear in court every 15 days until her trial, a date for which has not been set.
The first lady has been under investigation since 2024, and is one of several of Sanchez’s allies and relatives that have been accused of corruption, as well — including his predecessor Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero.
In addition to Gomez, Peinado ruled to allow her assistant, Cristina Alvarez, and a businessman who allegedly benefited Gomez’s actions, Juan Carlos Barrabes Consul, to also stand trial.
Allies of both Gomez and Sanchez calling the ruling unprecedented, as well as “delusional, obsessive and shameful.”
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“She is innocent,” the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party, which Gomez runs and her husband is member of, said in a statement on X.
“She has been judicially and politically persecuted for two years,” PSOE said in the statement. “What happened today is just another step, a democratic scandal that doesn’t hold up. They won’t stop.”
The investigations into Gomez over the last two years are based on complaints alleging that she aimed to benefit from public contracts for companies she has ties to.
“Behaviors such as these emanating from presidential palaces seem more characteristic of absolutist regimes, thankfully long forgotten in our country,” Peinado said in Saturday’s ruling.
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