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King of Spain’s sister Princess Cristina faces tax fraud trial King of Spain’s sister Princess Cristina faces tax fraud trial over husband Inaki Urdangarin's business dealings
(about 7 hours later)
The sister of the Spanish king, Princess Cristina, is to face trial on charges of tax fraud. Princess Cristina, King Felipe’s sister, had, since last February, already enjoyed the dubious honour of being the first of Spain’s modern-day royal family to answer questions in court. Today it was confirmed that she will now be the first, too, to go on trial – for tax fraud.
The prosecution makes the princess the first member of the country’s royal family to be charged with an offence in court since the restoration of the monarchy in 1975. The tax fraud charges are linked to a four-year legal probe into the business dealings of Cristina’s husband, Iñaki Urdangarin. Together with his former business partner Diego Torres, Mr Urdangarin is accused of embezzling millions of euros of public money through his non-profit organisation Noos and a shell company, Aizoon, co-owned by the Princess.
If convicted the princess could be send to prison for as long as four years. Her husband is also facing trial. Both Cristina and her husband, a former Olympic handball player, have regularly insisted they are innocent. Last week, state prosecutor Pedro Horrach recommended that she be fined €600,000 rather than face trial. She paid the money, but initially into the wrong bank account. But she is now expected to sit in the dock next summer with 16 other suspects.
A prosecutor earlier this month recommended that she should not be prosecuted, and instead fined nearly half a million pounds – but the decision was overruled by judge Jose Castro. The 49-year-old was questioned for six hours  last February by Judge Jose Castro, in charge of the case, about Aizoon’s accounts, which reportedly showed that money from the company had been used for everything from dance classes to Harry Potter books, salsa classes, staff wages and rebuilding a house.
The allegations centre on a property company called Aizoon, which Princess Cristina owns jointly with her husband, Olympic handball medallist Inaki Urdangarin. In his ruling earlier this year, Judge Castro stated that Mr Urdangarin’s business activities would: “Have been difficult, at the very least, to carry out without the knowledge and acquiescence of his wife, no matter how much she might have maintained an attitude of looking the other way.”
Prosecutors allege that company funds were misused by the couple to cover expenses at their home. However, the Princess insists that she had no knowledge of his financial affairs. She repeatedly used the expressions “I don’t know” and “I don’t recall” and said “No” an estimated 533 times during her questioning in February to emphasise these and other points.
The principal allegation is that Mr Urdangarin used his Duke of Palma title to embezzle around £4.7 million in public contracts through the Noos Institute, a non-profit foundation he set up. Still sixth in line to the throne – despite mounting speculation she may renounce her succession rights – Cristina has been sidelined from all court activities since the scandal broke, and was not present when her younger brother Felipe was sworn in as king last June. Since then, neither she nor her sister, Elena, are formally part of the royal family.
The foundation is then said to channel money to other businesses, including Aizoon. The trial, in Palma de Mallorca, is expected to be scheduled for the second half of 2015 and is predicted to last up to three months, with more than 400 witnesses and experts taking part.
The couple deny any wrongdoing. The latest development in a four-year saga that has contributed to a serious deterioration in the Spanish monarchy’s image comes just a few days before King Felipe is due to give the first ever Christmas Eve speech of his reign.
King Felipe, 46, became monarch in June this year after his father Juan Carlos abdicated after a four-decade reign. The King’s accession to the throne last summer, following his father Juan Carlos’ abdication, came along with promises of an “honest and transparent monarchy”.
A his coronation the new king told his subjects that “today, more than ever, the people rightly demand our public lives be guided by ... moral and ethical principles”. Polls suggest the King, himself untouched by any scandals and who has forbidden the family to accept expensive gifts, has done much to restore the monarchy’s popularity, badly eroded by the steady four-year drip-feed of lurid headlines concerning the Urdangarin case.
He said the Government’s priority would be finding jobs for the unemployed.
The case has damaged the image of the monarchy in Spain, where people are suffering from harsh austerity measures imposed in the wake of the financial crisis.
Though unemployment has recently started to fall, it is over 23%, with youth unemployment even higher.
Spain's monarchy was restored after end of the rule of fascist dictator General Franco.