The Prosecutor’s Office closes the investigations into Juan Carlos I alleging that the crimes prescribed

The Public Prosecutor’s Office has decreed the file of the proceedings opened more than two years ago with three aspects on the patrimony of the emeritus king: the millionaire commissions that he received for his intervention in the adjudication of the works of the AVE to Mecca, the use of opaque cards revealed by elDiario.es and, finally, his relationship with several million hidden on the island of Jersey.

In a note made public this afternoon, the Prosecutor’s Office indicates that “fees defrauded by the king emeritus between 2008 and 2012 have been detected, all prescribed except those of 2012, when he was also protected by inviolability.” In any case, the Prosecutor’s Office validates the regularizations before the Ministry of Finance despite the king emeritus having made them once he was notified.

In its decrees, the Prosecutor’s Office recognizes that the king emeritus could incur tax crimes between 2008 and 2012 for the funds received by the Lucum Foundation, from Juan Carlos I himself, in an account in Geneva, but that remain unpunished: most would be prescribed and the last one, that of 2011, would also go unpunished due to the inviolability that protected Juan Carlos de Bornbón before his abdication in 2014.

The Prosecutor’s Office also approves the tax regularizations made by the defense of the king emeritus on two occasions for a total value greater than five million euros. The investigators understand that the notices that the Prosecutor’s Office was giving to his lawyer about the opening of proceedings cannot be considered as a formal notice and that, therefore, the regularization is worth it to avoid an accusation of tax fraud: “The notifications of initiation of Investigative proceedings could not have, at the time they were carried out, the character of transferring the formal knowledge of the initiation of proceedings that would activate the temporary block to regularization,” says the letter.

As for the money detected by the anti-money laundering authorities in a trust on the island of Jersey, the Prosecutor’s Office relates that fortune to Joaquín Romero Maura and not, finally, to the monarch. “There is no evidence to link The JRM 2004 Trust with SMD Juan Carlos de Borbón, neither in its management nor in its ability to dispose of the funds; at no time has it been a beneficiary of the trust nor is there evidence that it has received an amount any of their accounts”, says the decree of the Prosecutor’s Office.

triple investigation

The investigation into Juan Carlos I and his fortune began in the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office in the framework of the Tandem operation, when the magnifying glass was on the recorded audios in which Corinna Larsen, former lover of the monarch, referred to the alleged collection and concealment of tens of millions of euros by the king emeritus. Already in 2020 it was the Supreme Court Prosecutor’s Office that took the reins of the investigation and began to analyze the money it charged for supposedly getting the works of the AVE to Mecca awarded to a consortium of Spanish companies. Tens of millions of euros that, in addition, the monarch would have hidden abroad behind the back of the Treasury.

From the outset, the Prosecutor’s Office made it clear that it was not going to question the inviolability that protected Juan Carlos de Borbón until June 2014, the date of his abdication. “This investigation focuses precisely on delimiting or ruling out the criminal relevance of the events that occurred after the month of June 2014, when the King Emeritus ceased to be protected by the inviolability” recognized by the Constitution, he said. the Supreme Prosecutor’s Office in the first statement of the case.

The proceedings were expanded over the months. First, as revealed exclusively by elDiario.es in November 2020, when Anticorruption discovered that both the king emeritus and several relatives had used credit cards for years behind the treasury’s back with money, allegedly from Mexican businessman Allen Sanginés- Krause. Later when the anti-money laundering authorities detected a fund in Jersey with several million euros that, at that time, linked the monarch emeritus.

Payments and notices

The opening of new proceedings ran parallel to a maneuver by the king’s defense, exercised by the lawyer and former prosecutor Javier Sánchez-Junco, to try to make peace with the Treasury and avoid criminal charges for tax fraud. The first payment came in December 2020, when his defense assured that on Wednesday the 9th of that month he had paid 678,393.72 euros to regularize the money that he did not pay to the Treasury while he used the opaque cards between 2016 and 2018. More than a month later that this newspaper revealed the existence of the investigations and later, as revealed The country newspaperthat the Prosecutor informed him that he was being investigated.

These communications reached the defense of the king emeritus after the opening of the three lines of investigation, and in the case of the cards it was accompanied by a regularization shortly after before the Treasury. It is the vault key of the matter: the axis of the investigation was always the possible fiscal crime and the Penal Code allows to avoid a criminal case for fraud if the regularization has arrived before the proceedings of the Prosecutor’s Office. The question was whether the notices from the Public Ministry, prior to payments to the Treasury, were sufficient to interrupt these deadlines and avoid impunity.

A second payment came in February 2021, when his defense paid 4.4 million euros to cover a series of undeclared expenses for the flights that the Zagatka Foundation, of his cousin Álvaro de Orleans, paid for years. A money that supposed a new line of investigation and that, according to El Paíscame from a series of businessmen close to the monarch who, in addition, sought the most beneficial way to do it before the Treasury: they used loan contracts and not donations to avoid paying around 40% in taxes.