Except for last-minute changes, the king emeritus will not come to Spain this Christmas either, according to sources close to him. It will be the third time that he has said goodbye to the year away from his country since he left La Zarzuela on August 3, 2020 after communicating by letter to Felipe VI his decision to “relocate, at this time, outside of Spain” to avoid scandals. that he starred in would further damage the Crown. As on other important dates, Juan Carlos I will receive the visit of his daughters, the princesses Elena and Cristina, some of his grandchildren and his most faithful friends in his golden retreat in a luxurious villa in the United Arab Emirates (USA), as Personal guest of Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed.
Unlike the two previous years, Juan Carlos I no longer has any outstanding accounts in Spain. The Tax Agency closed last November the inspection that it kept open due to the hunts to which he was invited between June 2014, when he abdicated the throne, and 2018. The legal representative of the former head of state signed an act of conformity and paid the corresponding sanction. Although the amount of it has not been disclosed, some sources estimate it at around 60,000 euros; very far from the 120,000 per year in which the bar for tax crime is located.
Already in December 2020, the emeritus king’s lawyer, Javier Sánchez-Junco, made a tax regularization of 678,393 euros to neutralize a possible complaint for the opaque funds provided by the Mexican businessman Allen Sanginés-Krause and used to buy gifts and finance familiar costs. In February 2021, he made a second regularization for an even larger amount: 4.4 million. This tax debt referred to the private plane flights that, from 2014 to 2018, were paid by the Zagatka Foundation, which was managed by his distant cousin Álvaro de Orleans, and which were considered income in kind for the Treasury.
The inspection closed this fall was the last fringe of his problems with the tax authorities and referred to an apparently minor matter, but with devastating potential, since it could reopen all the waterways laboriously clogged during the last two years: if it was concluded that the two previous regularizations were not “true and complete” would be invalidated and the path of tax crime reopened.
It was these regularizations —plus the immunity that he enjoyed until his abdication, the lack of evidence in some cases and the prescription in others— that led the chief Anti-Corruption Prosecutor, Alejandro Luzón, to order in March the archive of the three investigations into the foreign heritage of the king emeritus and rule out a lawsuit.
If we add to this that the Geneva Prosecutor’s Office had also filed the investigation three months earlier for the 100 million dollars he received in 2008 from Saudi Arabia, the only open cause known against Juan Carlos I in a courtroom is the Harassment lawsuit filed by his former lover Corinna Larsen. It is a civil lawsuit in which Juan Carlos I does not face a prison sentence, but does face the payment of compensation. Sources familiar with the case believe that the litigants have entered a spiral in which both are incurring multi-million dollar bills from very expensive law firms that whoever is sentenced to pay the costs will have to face.
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For now, Juan Carlos I has won the first battle: the Court of Appeals for England and Wales recognized on the 6th that the defendant enjoyed sovereign immunity until his abdication. There is still a case ahead, but the most controversial points have been left out of the process: the meeting that the then head of the National Intelligence Center (CNI), General Félix Sanz Roldán, held with Larsen in a London hotel in May 2012 , in which she claims to have been threatened; and the alleged entry of secret agents into her apartment in Monaco in June of that year.
The king emeritus is “grown up” after these judicial triumphs, according to those who have spoken with him. Although the decisions of judges and prosecutors respond to a large extent to the privileges he enjoyed as head of state, they seem to agree with those who told him from the beginning that there was no basis to act against him and that the open investigations responded to persecution unfair. More than ever, the phrase that he snapped at the journalists who asked him if he planned to give explanations, as the Government requested, when he went to Sanxenxo (Pontevedra) last May would make sense: “Explanations of what?”
Although, after the investigations of the Prosecutor’s Office were archived, the king emeritus communicated, again by means of a letter to Felipe VI, his intention to “continue residing permanently and stably in Abu Dhabi”, but travel “frequently” to Spain, not He has done it again since his controversial visit to Sanxenxo. The media spectacle surrounding his stay at the marina alarmed the Royal Household and, before he left Spain again, father and son had a long talk in which the latter asked for prudence and discretion.
Sources close to Juan Carlos I assure that he limited himself to following the guidelines of La Zarzuela but they acknowledge that, after that ill-fated experience, it is difficult for him to visit Spain except for justified cause. For example, a circumstance such as the funeral of Elizabeth II, which led the kings of Spain and emeritus kings to share a bench in London’s Westminster Abbey last September.
Further away is his definitive return. The same sources believe that Juan Carlos I will not reside in Spain again until the current government changes, to which he attributes (at least part of it) hostility towards him. That would explain the prolongation for months of the tax investigations or the public criticism of high officials. Next year will be marked by the electoral cycle and that environment is not the most favorable for solving the problems that his return raises: from a residence (which could not be La Zarzuela) to an economic allowance, which he has lacked since he was Felipe VI withdrew.
The emeritus king does not hide his desire to be present when his granddaughter Leonor is sworn in by the Constitution as heir to the throne. The date initially set was October 31, 2023, when the Princess of Asturias turns 18, but it is likely that the solemn act will be postponed until the new Parliament is constituted, after the next general elections.
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