The Republican Assembly of Vigo has reported the King Emeritus and the Infantas Elena and Cristina to the State Attorney General’s Office and the Tax Agency (AEAT) for alleged tax crimes and money laundering. The entity considers that the creation in Abu Dhabi, by Juan Carlos de Borbón, of a foundation with funds of several million dollars to ensure the inheritance of his daughters demonstrates that he has funds abroad that he has hidden from the Spanish treasury, even after two tax regularizations. His fortune estimated by Forbes and the New York Times – according to information from El Confidencial included in the complaint – reaches two billion euros.
The complaint, filed this afternoon in the city’s courts, recalls that the emeritus made a first tax regularization in December 2020 for a value of 678,393 euros and another, two months later, for an amount of 4.4 million euros for which, according to his testimony, he had to borrow money from his friends and thus convinced the AEAT that he no longer had any money. “Neither because of the concept nor because of their amount, the assets hidden abroad were regularized,” he argues.
In their accusation, they collect a lot of journalistic information, including that cited by El Confidencial where it is stated that none of the infantas receive any financial allocation from the general state budget since they ceased to be part of the Royal House in 2014. Elena “works at the Mapfre Foundation and receives a salary of around 300,000 euros per year” while Cristina “earns around 400,000 euros from the Aga Khan Foundation, based in Geneva”. These are “considerable” salaries, but the emeritus “fears losing these jobs after he leaves”. This is not their only income since both “traditionally feed on the undeclared funds that their father kept abroad and that his advisers periodically gave him in cash at the Zarzuela Palace”.
The foundation, chaired by Borbón, 87, and with his daughters on the board of directors, thus functions as a “succession vehicle” in which King Felipe VI has not participated and does not appear as a future beneficiary. The procedures were carried out discreetly to avoid a new scandal, after the opening of investigations against the King Emeritus by the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office and the Prosecutor’s Office of the Canton of Geneva (Switzerland). The creation of the entity responds to the concern of Juan Carlos I, who will be 87 in January, about the situation in which his two daughters could find themselves after his death.
“Now, knowing that he remains unpunished, he offends Spanish citizens by bringing out his hidden assets, even without having the delicacy to wait for the prescription of the law to verify the regularized periods and taxes”, which, according to the Republican Assembly, would occur respectively in December of this year and in February 2025.
The entity considers that “membership in the Board of Directors of an opaque inheritance institution, fed by funds defrauded from the Public Treasury and of probably illicit origin”, makes the infantas “coverers” of one or more tax crimes and “perpetrators” of a crime of money laundering, to which would be added a tax offense or a crime against the Public Treasury for having received funds from abroad without declaring, in the name of his father, financing his “high standard of living”.
“Spanish citizens are once again stunned by the behavior of the previous royal house. The astonishment caused by these recurring reports is unmatched by any other case of public corruption. The two administrations questioned have a legal obligation to clarify and pursue the behaviors that can be deduced from the reported facts. This is a strict duty, a question of inescapable legality but also of public morality, politically troubled by the indecency of such behavior,” concludes the complaint of the Republican Assembly.
