The ex-king Juan Carlos of Spain will leave the country. Suspected of corruption and under investigation of the supreme Court, it announced this decision in a letter to his son, king Felipe VI, cited by the royal House. “Guided by the conviction to render the best service to the Spaniards, to their institutions, and to thee as a king, I will inform of my decision flipped me into exile, in this period, outside of Spain,” wrote the former sovereign quoted in the press release of the royal House, where king Felipe VI will accept and thank him for his decision.
at the Beginning of June, the Spanish supreme Court had announced the opening of an investigation to determine if Juan Carlos had a criminal responsibility in a case of alleged corruption when saudi Arabia had entrusted to a consortium of Spanish construction of the TGV (high speed train Mecca. The justice investigation on these facts since 2018, but by virtue of the immunity which he enjoys, only the supreme Court may seek to identify the responsibility of the former monarch, now 82-year-old, and only for acts committed after his abdication. “This is a decision that I take with a profound sorrow, but a great serenity,” continued the old king in his letter.
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End of reign tarnished
” a year ago, I had expressed my desire to abandon the institutional activities “, he recalls, claiming to have ” always wanted the best for Spain and the crown “. “With the same zeal to serve the Spain during my reign, and to the public consequences of certain events of my private life, I wish you to express my availability of the most absolute in order to contribute to facilitate the exercise of your functions, with the peace and serenity that requires your high level of responsibility. My heritage, and my dignity as a person me the order, ” writes Juan Carlos.
On its website where was published the official letter, the royal House said that the king stressed the “historic importance” of the reign of his father ” in the service of Spain and democracy “, while reaffirming the principles and values on which these are based, the Constitution and ” our legal system “. Juan Carlos I abdicated in June 2014 in favour of his son Felipe, while the end of his reign had been tarnished by various scandals, and in particular the suspicion that his fortune opaque and its close relations with the saudi royal family.
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An investigation 2018
The investigation had matured to the prosecutor of the high court as ” one of the people involved in the facts under investigation was the king, the present king emeritus Juan Carlos of Bourbon “, was indicated in June by the supreme Court. “This investigation is precisely to establish or rule out the relevance (of prosecution) in criminal matters which occurred after the month of June 2014, on which date the king emeritus, has ceased to be protected by the inviolability,” added the prosecutor in a press release. The case had been opened in September 2018 following the publication of the records of the old mistress of Juan Carlos, Corinna Zu Sayn-Wittgenstein, who maintained that the sovereign had received a commission for the grant of a contract of € 6.7 billion for the construction of a high-speed train between Mecca and Medina, to a consortium of Spanish companies.
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” It would be an offense of corruption and bribery in international commercial transactions “, was then reported to the public prosecutor. The swiss daily Tribune de Genève said in early march that Juan Carlos had received, in 2008, 100 million dollars from king Abdullah of saudi Arabia, in an account in Switzerland to a foundation of panama. The same month, the daily newspaper the Daily Telegraph reported that Felipe VI was also a beneficiary of this foundation. After the publication of these articles, Felipe VI has removed to his father an annual endowment to the royal Palace valued at more than 194 000 euros per year. Then he announced that he was abandoning the legacy of his father ” in order to preserve the exemplarity of the crown “.
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