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From: TT
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Photo: Andrea Comas / AP / TT
Former King of Spain Juan Carlos, here in the photo from last year.
The former King of Spain Juan Carlos, who left the country during a corruption investigation in August, has paid the equivalent of seven million crowns to the Spanish tax authorities. Exactly what the tax debt is, your lawyers don’t want to say.
Juan Carlos’s lawyers affirm that the former monarch paid more than 678,000 euros, which includes late payment interest and fines for the previously unpaid tax, but they do not comment on the matter more than that.
“His Majesty King Juan Carlos is, as always, at the disposal of the Tax Agency,” they say.
According to El País, part of the money is suspected of illegal credit debts and the newspaper says that Juan Carlos has paid them off in the hope of avoiding prosecution and thus being able to return to Spain from the United Arab Emirates where he has been since August.
Double investigations
According to the Spanish press, the payments in question may be related to the investigation that the Spanish Supreme Court initiated in June on suspicion of tax fraud and money laundering where it is suspected that Juan Carlos and other members of the royal family have used bank accounts from other individuals to hide assets.
This must have happened after 2014, when Juan Carlos abdicated, which means that he is not protected by the procedural immunity enjoyed by the country’s head of state.
The investigation is ongoing in parallel with a corruption investigation in which Swiss prosecutors suspect that a gift of several hundred million crowns from the former king to his former lover is a front for money laundering and the money is linked to a gift of nearly a billion crowns from then-King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.
Juan Carlos denies all the accusations and says that he is at the disposal of the Swiss authorities.
“The monarchy is not in danger”
On Wednesday night, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez defended the constitutional monarchy and told Spanish television that Juan Carlos, like everyone else, should be acquitted until proven guilty.
“The government can guarantee that all the mechanisms of democracy work and that the investigation is transparent in its conclusions,” Sánchez said, adding:
– The monarchy is not in danger.
The scandal-ravaged former king, formally king emeritus, abdicated in 2014 and even then his long life had long been the subject of discussion. His son, King Felipe VI, has tried to distance himself from his father and announced earlier this year that he will not receive an economic inheritance in the future.
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