For lack of evidence, Spanish justice abandons its investigations into Juan Carlos I. As reported by AFP on March 2, 2022, the three judicial investigations which targeted the former king of Spain have been closed without further action. The father of Felipe VI could therefore return to his country of origin, he who has lived in exile in the United Arab Emirates since the summer of 2020.
These surveys”do not allow criminal action to be taken against His Majesty Juan Carlos de Bourbon (…) in particular because of the lack of incriminating evidence, the prescription of offenses and because of the inviolability” from which he benefited as head of state until 2014, the date of his abdication, said the Spanish prosecutor’s office in a press release. This classification without action comes after a similar decision in December by the Swiss courts. of Juan Carlos’s return to Spain, his lawyer indicated that he would soon communicate on his client’s “decisions”.Last summer, the newspaper El País claimed that the deposed 84-year-old king was finding time in his golden bubble and that he only hoped for one thing: to return to his country of origin. To see if his state of health, fragile, will allow it…
In its press release, however, the prosecution highlights the “tax irregularities” of which the former king was guilty from 2008 to 2012, but recalls that he cannot be prosecuted for this because of the prescription of the offense or his immunity. of head of state. And he is pleased that his investigations have enabled the tax authorities to recover more than five million eurosthe fruit of two tax regularizations carried out by Juan Carlos in an attempt to escape criminal prosecution.
As a reminder, since 2018, the Spanish justice sought to determine if the ex-sovereign had pocketed a commission for the allocation, in 2011, to a Spanish consortium of the construction of a railway line between Mecca and Medina, in Arabia. saudi. The payment in 2008 by the Saudi monarchy of 100 million dollars to the Swiss account of a foundation of which Juan Carlos was the beneficiary was at the center of this first file. But the prosecution explained in its press release that this sum was a priori a “gift” received by the sovereign in his capacity as head of state, which could however have represented an offense of “corruption” now prescribed, according to the Public minister. Most of this sum was finally given in 2012 by Juan Carlos to his ex-mistress Corinna Larsen.
One scandal after another
In a second case, Spanish prosecutors were investigating Juan Carlos’ alleged use of credit cards linked to bank accounts in the names of a Mexican entrepreneur and an air force officer. Spanish. Finally, the third investigation was opened a year ago after a report by the “money laundering prevention service” on an alleged trust linked to the ex-monarch in the Channel Island of Jersey, considered to be a tax haven.
In the summer of 2020, when he left for the United Arab Emirates, Juan Carlos explained that he wanted to “facilitate” his son “to exercise” his duties before “the public consequences of certain past events in (his) private life“. Even before this exile, Felipe VI had decided in March 2020, faced with the multiplication of revelations, to renounce the inheritance of his father and to withdraw his annual allowance of nearly 200,000 euros. If Letizia’s husband d Spain has refrained from commenting publicly on this affair, his sisters Elena and Cristina have visited their father on several occasions.
In addition to the dark affairs of Juan Carlos, the Spanish royal family recently had to deal with another scandal: the announcement of the divorce of the Infanta Cristina and her husband Iñaki Urdangarin, after the publication of photos in the press showing the latter in another woman’s arms…