The letter in which the emeritus king communicates to his son Felipe VI his decision to continue residing “permanently and stable” in Abu Dhabi and travel “frequently” to Spain, after the investigations into his fortune abroad were filed opened by the Prosecutor’s Office, left La Zarzuela, according to government sources.
The draft of the letter signed by Juan Carlos I and released on Monday by the Casa del Rey, was prepared in La Zarzuela, in close coordination with La Moncloa on its meaning, and was handed over to the former head of state, his lawyer, Javier Sánchez-Junco, and the former director of the National Intelligence Center (CNI), General Félix Sanz Roldán, who traveled to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to meet with him last weekend
Initially, the lawyer and the general planned to take the two decrees of the Prosecutor’s Office that filed the investigations against him to the King’s father, but they ended up also being carriers of the draft of the letter in which Juan Carlos I announced his plans for the future.
The sources consulted explain that Juan Carlos I accepted, after examining it, the draft of the letter, as it could not be otherwise, since the king emeritus is “disciplined” and Felipe VI not only holds the title of head of state, but also also that of head of the Royal Family.
Although the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, assured this Tuesday that he learned on Monday “of the meaning, not the content” of the letter, of which he “acknowledged receipt”, its fundamental lines were known and had been agreed with La Moncloa, according to the sources consulted.
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In reality, the decisions announced in the letter had been brewing in recent months: the king emeritus would not immediately return to Spain, although his judicial landscape had been cleared with the file of both the investigations of the Spanish prosecutor’s office and previously of the Swiss , but you could visit your family and friends. And Juan Carlos I would not perform public functions again and, consequently, would not recover the official allocation of almost 200,000 euros per year that his son withdrew from him in March 2020. Finally, in the event that he returned to live in Spain, he would not reside in the Palacio de La Zarzuela or in any National Heritage unit and, when he traveled to Spain, he would not spend the night in the official residence of the head of state, although he could visit, since it is the home of his wife and family.
Those were the conditions that the Casa del Rey had agreed with La Moncloa and that were accepted by Juan Carlos I. In fact, according to sources close to him, the king emeritus had already assumed that he would have to stay for a while residing in Abu Dhabi, where enjoy amenities, medical care, and privacy you won’t find anywhere else. His installation in Spain would not only attract media interest, but would also reopen the debate on what his means of livelihood are (no source of income is known to him) and he would once again be a tax resident in Spain, subject to a possible tax Inspectorate.
All these circumstances were known to Pedro Sánchez; what the head of government was unaware of, according to his words, was the paragraph of the letter in which Juan Carlos I states: “I am aware of the importance for public opinion of the events that took place in my private life and that I deeply regret ”. This threat of requesting an apology was very far from the public explanations that the head of government had demanded of him.
These explanations were more necessary to the extent that the decrees of the Prosecutor’s Office confirm indications of the existence of at least three crimes: a fiscal crime corresponding to the 2012 personal income tax return, which would not be prescribed; a crime of improper bribery, for the donation of 65 million dollars made in 2008 by the then King of Saudi Arabia, Abdullah bin Abdulaziz; and another of money laundering, for the transfer of said funds to his ex-lover Corinna Larsen in 2012. On the other hand, the Prosecutor’s Office found no consistent evidence that he had charged commissions for the award to a Spanish consortium of the AVE to Mecca, nor that it had a relationship, at least since 2004, with a trust in the tax haven of the island of Jersey.
The King would have escaped criminal responsibility for these events due to the immunity that, as head of state, he enjoyed until his abdication in 2014 and also for the two regularizations that, worth 678,393 euros and 4.4 million euros, he carried out in December 2020 and February 2021, respectively.
The file decrees of the Prosecutor’s Office are not appealable and neither has Juan Carlos I’s lawyer refuted them, which implies an implicit acceptance of the veracity of their content. It is precisely the moral reproach derived from the account of the events of the Prosecutor’s Office, although a legal reproach is not possible, which would have advised Felipe VI to keep his father away from him for a while from the Head of State.
Sources close to the king emeritus had already been pointing out that he had assumed that his return to Spain would not be imminent, but he did insist that, when it did occur, he should return to La Zarzuela, since that was his house, from which he left on the 3 August 2020 to become an expat. He has now waived that claim as well.
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