Yesterday it was learned that a Madrid court opened proceedings against Begoña Gómez, the wife of the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, for alleged influence peddling and corruption. In the afternoon, Sánchez announced through a letter that left his continuity as president up in the air due to the investigation that has been initiated against his wife due to the complaint by the Manos Liminas collective. But what is this organization and who is its founder?
According to its own website, Clean Hands is a “union organization of public officials” whose objective is “the defense of the interests of its members inside and outside the public sector.”
Clean Hands, which was founded in 1995, defines itself as an anti-corruption union and against separatist nationalisms and is legally formed as a voluntary association. With more than 6,000 members, Clean Hands does not present accounts or hold the assemblies required by its statutes. Furthermore, it is not represented in any workplace, and its representativeness in the civil service is unknown.
Its founder is Miguel Bernad, a Spanish lawyer and former politician from the National Front party who was born in 1942. Bernad entered politics with Blas Piñar and ran on the National Front lists for the elections to the European Parliament in 1987 and 1989. After failing in both elections, the former politician registered another party, Spanish Right, which had no relevance.
The National Front was a political party led by Blas Piñar that lasted seven years, between 1986 and 1993 and with far-right ideas.
In 2014, the National Police investigated Hands Cleans for allegedly filing complaints against companies and institutions and then demanding a large amount of money from them in exchange for withdrawing them.
One of the facts investigated was the withdrawal in the middle of the judicial process of a complaint filed by Clean Hands, supposedly “because they had already collected the extortion”, which was denied by the union, which claimed to be suffering “a campaign of harassment and demolition.” by the “sewers of the State”.
Luis Pineda, president of Ausbanc, a company that was also investigated in the same plot, was sentenced to eight years in prison and Bernad, from Manos Médicas, was sentenced to four years for extortion and fraud. However, a few weeks ago the Supreme Court acquitted both, considering that “the pressures that Luis P. actually used in his negotiations were not enough to satisfy the concept of intimidation.”
In 2007, due to the 11-M attacks, Clean Hands filed several complaints against judges Juan del Olmo, Baltasar Garzón and against prosecutor Olga Sánchez before the General Council of the Judiciary and justice.
In one of these complaints, specifically against the judge of the National Court, Juan del Omo, for an alleged destruction of evidence from 11-M, the Supreme Court dismissed the complaint and requested that Manos Cleans be investigated for accusations and false complaints, although the complaint was later filed when it was considered that there was no crime.
In 12 years, specifically between 1997 and 2009, Clean Hands filed a total of eighteen lawsuits, complaints and complaints in different areas against Judge Baltasar Garzón, all of them without success. The last of these, in 2009, was admitted for processing for alleged prevarication in the investigation procedure of the crimes and disappearances that occurred in Spain during the Franco dictatorship.
Clean Hands also filed a complaint with the National Court for alleged foreign accounts of several CiU leaders. In addition, the organization also denounced the Pujol family for alleged crimes against the public treasury, money laundering, negotiations prohibited to authorities and officials, and influence peddling.
Subsequently, the National Court refused to investigate the accounts of CiU leaders abroad.
The Nóos case was a plot to divert public funds that came to court in 2010 and in which, among others, Iñaki Urdangarin, husband of Infanta Cristina, was prosecuted.
On this occasion, the Manos Cleans union appeared to request the indictment of Infanta Cristina and, finally, the court in the case sentenced them to pay the entire cost that the trial caused the Infanta after being acquitted of the tax crimes that were committed. they attributed to him.
Another front of Clean Hands is homosexuality. First of all, he reported to the Ombudsman the law that was approved on July 2, 2005 that allowed same-sex marriages. The complaint was quickly filed.
In addition, he also reported ‘Los Lunnies’, a children’s series on Spanish Television, to the Ombudsman for Children, for showing a single-parent family during one of its episodes. The complaint was also filed.
The Clean Hands union appeared as a popular accusation in the case of the false ERE of Andalusia, a plot that was uncovered in 2009 with a complaint from the PP of Seville. The case focuses on a network of fraudulent early retirements discovered in numerous employment regulation files (ERE) promoted by Andalusian companies and incentivized with regional funds through a formula that is also questioned. In 2018, the defenses requested the expulsion of Manos Liminas as a popular accusation in the trial due to “lack of legitimacy.”
In 2012, Clean Hands filed a complaint against the former president of the Government José Luís Rodríguez Zapatero for an alleged crime of falsification of a public document and another of damages to the national economy.
A year later, it was added as an accusation to the Izquierda Unida complaint against Luis Bárcenas and Álvaro Lapuerta in what would later be known as the ‘Bárcenas case’.
Other filed cases are, for example, the complaint by Manos Cleans against Irene Montero for criticizing the judges or the complaint against Alberto Garzón for calling the emeritus king a “thief.”
