Juan Carlos de Borbón is recovering and bringing together all the assets he has spread around the world in a single financial vehicle based in Abu Dhabi to organize the economic legacy that his heirs will receive upon his death. The emeritus king, who is now 86 years old, is preparing the distribution of a fortune of unknown size that he would have hidden from the Spaniards, and from the Public Treasury, despite the fact that in 2020 and 2021 he paid five million euros to the Tax Agency to prevent a investigation for four tax crimes. A controversial regularization that is now more in question.
The emeritus king took up residence in the capital of the United Arab Emirates in 2020 after the exile he assumed following the collapse of his reign due to the economic and personal scandals that pushed him to abdicate in 2014. That country is famous for its financial opacity and there Juan Carlos de Borbón will no longer have to pay taxes.
Juan Carlos I abdicated, but his resignation did not end the flood of information about his lovers and his assets hidden abroad so as not to be held accountable to the Public Treasury. The breakup of Juan Carlos de Borbón with Corinna Zu Sayn-Wittgenstein, better known as Corinna Larsen, caused the revelation of million-dollar income and expenses without justifying and without paying taxes on them, which led to an investigation by the Treasury and the Prosecutor’s Office.
The Prosecutor’s Office determined that part of the events occurred when Juan Carlos de Borbón was king, so the constitutional inviolability of the head of State exempted him from all responsibility. And to clear up the other files, Juan Carlos de Borbón made complementary statements that the Prosecutor’s Office accepted in a controversial decision.
One, at the end of 2020, for 678,394 euros. The other, already in 2021, for 4.4 million euros. The first of the payments settled the investigation into the use that he and part of the then Royal Family made of accounts and credit cards opaque to the treasury. The second, the investigation into the flights on private jets that were funded by the international foundation of a cousin of his.
He paid those 4.4 million with an alleged loan that, according to what he declared to the Tax Agency, he received from a group of friends due to his alleged lack of funds. These types of formulas involve presenting an amortization plan to the Treasury to return the financial aid, although the emeritus king could not present any income that would allow us to think that, in fact, he was going to return the money. Otherwise, it would be a hidden donation that would generate new taxes before the Community of Madrid.
By the time the alleged loan was formalized, the emeritus king no longer received the direct allocation that, at the discretion of his son and successor to the throne, Felipe VI. The current monarch admitted in March 2020, with the country confined and in shock in the face of the worst global pandemic in a century, his participation (theoretically unconscious) in the financial vehicles that his father would have used to evade his assets, as well as his intention to renounce the monetary inheritance that corresponds to him from his parent. He assured it before a notary, for himself and for his eldest daughter, Leonor, Princess of Asturias and first in the line of succession. This is a declaration without legal value.
Felipe VI also left the emeritus king without the salary of 161,036 euros that he himself had given him from the budgets of Zarzuela. His mother, Sofia of Greece, continues to receive her allowance, and the head of state has not stated his intention to renounce the monetary inheritance that corresponds to him for that part.
Lies to the Treasury
The information about the new financial vehicle being prepared by the king emeritus, advanced by El Confidencial, raises new suspicions about the origin of the assets held by Juan Carlos de Borbón, who has kept it until now and where. Nothing new in the history of the Spanish monarchy.
The news now lies in the fact that the emeritus king may have lied in the complementary statements that helped him escape from a series of investigations for tax crimes that could have culminated in a criminal conviction for him.
The Penal Code establishes that complementary declarations to update the Treasury prevent “being prosecuted for possible accounting irregularities or other instrumental falsehoods that, exclusively in relation to the tax debt subject to regularization, the same person could have previously committed.” to regularization.” That is, they close the case.
But as Treasury inspector Ransés Pérez Boga recalls in conversation with elDiario.es, this regularization must be “complete and truthful.” And the appearance of these funds could indicate that the complementary ones of 2020 and 2021 were not. Especially the latter, which includes the syndicated loan from the friends of the king emeritus.
“The investigation could be reopened,” says Pérez Boga, who is head of the Inspection team at the Tax Agency, since if the information was confirmed, the king emeritus would have lied to the Treasury.
According to this inspector, a new avenue of fiscal problems could open up for the eldest of the Bourbons. The new financial vehicle could produce some profitability. Or it would allow the funds managed there to be used for expenses, whether personal or within the framework of some activity of the foundation. In that case, tax residents in Spain would have to pay the corresponding personal income tax.
Because at least the two daughters of the emeritus king are on the board of said foundation, always according to information published in recent days. The same news indicates that Felipe VI is not on the board by his own decision. Neither did his heir, Leonor. Nothing is known about the role of the king’s second daughter, Sofía de Borbón.
elDiario.es has tried, without success, to obtain information and opinion from the King’s House about these developments in the estate of Juan Carlos I. The Zarzuela Palace has declined to respond as to whether or not it had knowledge of the foundation that supposedly has created the king emeritus, if he knows what assets he has, who is part of the board of trustees or if the current head of state received the proposal himself.
Inspector Ransés Pérez does not believe, however, that the Prosecutor’s Office is going to reactivate any investigation into the emeritus king, and remembers that at the time they said “that they were going to pull the thread and they have not pulled anything.” “Things are pretty close,” confesses the inspector.
One way is the complaint filed by the prosecutor Antón Beiras on behalf of the Republican Assembly of Vigo, directed against the emeritus and his two daughters and who considers that the creation of the foundation shows that the Bourbon has funds abroad that he hid from the Public Treasury after two regularizations.
Beiras and other complainants believe that “neither due to the concept nor the amount, assets hidden abroad were regularized” with the complementary 2020 and 2021 reports, and they urge the Prosecutor’s Office to reopen the investigation in this regard. Furthermore, remembers the prosecutor, the regularization returns to zero the deadlines for the prescription of the possible crimes that could arise from the actions, which would effectively allow said investigation. In his opinion, there could be crimes of fraud against the Public Treasury, money laundering or concealment.
The problem, remembers Ransés Pérez, is that Spain could ask for a lot of information, but the cooperation agreement signed by both countries ensures that the authorities should not report on something that their legislation prevents them from knowing. And financial secrecy is one of the Emirates’ main assets. “Even if we ask, it will not be given to us,” he says.
The Treasury inspector remembers that Juan Carlos de Borbón is doing something “that they have already done before” and that allows properties to be transferred in a simple way and, by doing so in the Emirates, outside the radar of the Treasury. “They already own the assets, the grandchildren and great-grandchildren will live off their interests,” he says.
“From that moment on, we will have to be very attentive to the trustees, when they begin to use the money or assets of the foundation,” he points out. “They would have to pay personal income tax or donations and inheritances,” he points out. Because “when he dies, the headlines will be different. And there is an inheritance produced,” he adds.
“They are stealing my story”
Because even if the emeritus king never takes up residence in Spain again, his heirs could have tax problems when disposing of the capital that he has accumulated in recent decades. For this reason, Pérez Boga warns that his daughters could have more problems, both with the financial vehicle opened in the Emirates and with the loan of 4.4 million if it is not returned in the time and manner that was reported to the Treasury.
“Nothing will happen except a scandalous revelation,” the inspector ventures. But in recent days the Spanish monarchy has once again made headlines. In addition to the revelations about Juan Carlos de Borbón’s assets, the emeritus king seems willing to publish his memoirs.
As the French publisher Stock made public this Tuesday, the book will be titled ‘Reconciliation’ and is based on a premise expressed by the emeritus himself: “I have the feeling that my story is being stolen from me.” A Bourbon tradition when it comes to pass.
Nobody knows what the king could collect in his memoirs. What I would talk about and what I wouldn’t. Nor from whom. Just one day later, this same Wednesday, the Dutch magazine ‘Privé’ published some old photographs of the then Juan Carlos I with his lover, Bárbara Rey. In the images they both kiss and hug.
Unpublished images of a relationship well known to the Spanish, who have now found a way to see the light, 30 years after being taken. Some information claims that it was Bárbara Rey’s son who sold them.
A decade after abdicating, four years after going into exile, Juan Carlos de Borbón spends more time in Spain than he has in recent years. On Wednesday he crossed the border from Portugal to attend the regattas in his honor starting this Friday, which are held in the waters of Sanxenxo (Pontevedra). An event that lasts a week.
This same Friday, the kings also traveled to Galicia, specifically to a “private dinner” in A Coruña for “the 40 years of the flag oath of promotion of the king’s Navy”, as reported by the Palace of the Zarzuela in a statement. And the kings have seen the emeritus.
“Logically, the kings have gone to see the Princess at the Naval Academy, and in that context, upon learning of it, King Juan Carlos has asked to go see the Princess, and a brief family and private meeting of the kings has taken place. four”, the same sources from the Royal House have explained.
In recent days there had been speculation about this meeting, since Felipe VI had an official agenda scheduled for next week. Next Thursday, the king will inaugurate the La Toja Forum, which is held on Illa da Toxa, just 15 kilometers from Sanxenxo. Last year they met in the same province at the same time and, officially, they did not see each other.
Father and son had already seen each other this September at the funeral for Juan Gómez-Acebo, nephew of the emeritus king and cousin of the current king on September 8. A day later ‘El Confidencial’ published the information about the new foundation of Juan Carlos de Borbón.
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