Retired Supreme Court judges in Spain, along with several former prosecutors and left-wing cultural figures, have filed a criminal complaint in the country’s Supreme Court, accusing the disgraced and exiled former king, Juan Carlos I, of five alleged offences of tax fraud. They argue that the 86-year-old should face trial for these alleged crimes.
Back in March 2022, Spanish prosecutors closed three probes into the former king’s finances due to insufficient evidence and the statute of limitations, but said several irregularities had been found. The corruption scandals and original allegations against Juan Carlos had led him to ‘flee Spain’ in 2020. ALSO READ: Spain’s prosecutors drop investigations into finances of former king Juan Carlos.
The plaintiffs now contend that Juan Carlos was wrongly absolved of tax fraud charges over two years ago and are calling for him to be summoned from his current residence in Abu Dhabi to stand trial. They also urge that a dozen individuals involved in managing his overseas fortune or covering his expenses be questioned.
Juan Carlos abdicated the throne in 2014 in favour of his son, Felipe VI, and has since paid over €5 million to Spain’s tax authority in an effort to settle the related scandals.
The complaint, filed on Sunday and reported by El País, alleges that Juan Carlos’s tax regularisation, covering the years 2014-2018, was not legally valid. According to the plaintiffs, he had already been informed by the Public Prosecutor’s Office that an investigation was underway, which Spanish law prohibits when attempting to regularise taxes.
The alleged crimes are linked to multimillion-dollar funds that Juan Carlos received through the Zagatka Foundation, chaired by his cousin Carlos de Orleans, which reportedly covered €8 million worth of private expenses.
Additional investigations tied him to credit card transactions funded by Mexican businessman Allen Sanginés-Krause. While the former king did not initially declare this income, he filed self-assessments in February 2021 for the tax years in question, reportedly to avoid penalties.
The plaintiffs criticise the Supreme Prosecutor’s Office, stating that its rationale for accepting Juan Carlos’s tax regularisation ‘lacks legal support and contradicts the timeline contained in its own documents’, which ultimately closed the case. Although they are not seeking imprisonment for the former king due to his advanced age, they demand ‘the maximum fine that can be imposed’.
The complaint characterises the accusations as ‘five crimes against the public Treasury’, punishable by two to six years in prison and fines ranging from two to six times the defrauded amounts.
Juan Carlos’s lawyer has countered that the Public Prosecutor’s Office letters notifying him of the investigation did not specify the reasons for the probe. The legal team has yet to comment on this latest complaint.
The plaintiffs, however, argue that since June 2020, the emeritus king could have learned through media reports about the Prosecutor’s Office’s investigation into his undeclared foreign income.
Also read: Swiss prosecutors close corruption probe against Spain’s former king Juan Carlos.
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