Royal trouble for the Spanish royals
...“The spectacle of a monarch hunting elephants in Africa while the economic crisis in our country causes so many problems for Spaniards transmits an image of indifference and frivolity,” thundered El Mundo, Spain’s leading conservative newspaper. The country’s largest paper, El País, calculated that a luxury safari like the King’s would cost nearly $60,000 (including $15,000 for the permit and fees to kill an elephant)—twice the average annual salary in a country suffering through the worst depression in Europe after Greece’s....
....Nearly every Spanish newspaper, TV channel, and online news site ran the now infamous photograph of Juan Carlos standing proudly in front of a dead elephant, which he had killed on a previous undisclosed big-game shoot. Compounding the embarrassment, four days before the King’s fall, his 13-year-old grandson—the son of his older daughter—had shot himself in the foot during target practice at one of the royal family’s country houses, and police were investigating the incident because in Spain the use of firearms by those under the age of 14 is illegal. This in turn had allowed the press to bring up a family tragedy that had occurred 56 years earlier, when Juan Carlos, then 18, accidentally shot and killed his 14-year-old brother, Alfonso....It soon came out that the King’s hunting party had included Princess Corinna zu Sayn-Wittgenstein, a glamorous, 46-year-old, twice-divorced German businesswoman based in Monaco, and that she had flown with him on the plane of Mohamed Eyad Kayali, a Syrian-born Saudi deal-maker, who paid for the safari. ...
....In November 2011, the Spanish people learned that Iñaki Urdangarín, the husband of the King’s younger daughter, Infanta Cristina, was under investigation for allegedly embezzling millions of euros from his nonprofit sports foundation, the Nóos Institute...
..... Yet questions remained as to how Juan Carlos had amassed a personal fortune said to be about $2 billion. .... In early April, El Mundo alleged that Juan Carlos had secreted in Swiss accounts millions of dollars that he had inherited from his father, Don Juan de Borbón, who had lived in exile during the Franco years (and would have been king had the Generalissimo not chosen his son as his successor instead)..
Vanity Fair
More seriously, the press began to ask why Sayn-Wittgenstein—who left Boss & Co. in 2006 to start her own consulting firm, Apollonia Associates—accompanied the King on trips to foreign countries, including Germany, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates. Suspicions were raised after the Botswana story broke, when El Mundo reported that Mohamed Eyad Kayali, the King and Corinna’s safari host, was the “right-hand man” of Prince Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, the Saudi defense minister, who had “fixed” the $9 billion deal for a consortium of Spanish companies to build the high-speed railway between Mecca and Medina.
“In the Corinna affair, there are two aspects,” said Pedro Ramírez. “One is the personal relationship. I would say in Spain this is not important, that the King has a lover or a very close friend. What is embarrassing in the affair is the financial implications.” A few days before I interviewed Ramírez, his newspaper had linked Sayn-Wittgenstein to the Saudi-Spanish Infrastructure Fund, which had been dedicated at the El Pardo palace in 2007 by King Juan Carlos and King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. “Spanish companies committed $200 million, but the fund collapsed when the Saudis didn’t come through with their $800 million,” Ramírez explained. “The only money spent was $15 million, which went to the fund managers, Cheyne Capital, who were friends of Corinna, who got close to $5 million.”
When I asked Sayn-Wittgenstein about the extent of her involvement in the King’s official business, she responded firmly, “I have never done business for the King, or collected any money on his behalf… Business in Spain has been conducted for the last 30 or 40 years in a particular manner… Whenever there are large deals for Spanish companies in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, or Latin America, the person that politicians and the business community call is the King, and he makes the calls.”
She said that she had had “absolutely nothing to do” with the Saudi high-speed train deal, that Shahpari Khashoggi, the third ex-wife of Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi, “was the agent for the Spanish side on that.” She also told me, “Yes, I was involved in the Saudi-Spanish Infrastructure Fund, and I was paid, because I worked for two years giving advice to the fund manager.” She concluded, “My message is I don’t have an agenda, other than huge respect for the King and Prince Felipe.” Had she met the Queen? “I bumped into her once, accidentally.”
VANITY FAIR OCTOBER 2013
For decades, Spain’s Juan Carlos was one of the most powerful and
popular monarchs in Europe, hailed as the father of his country’s
democracy. Today, he faces a crisis: his younger daughter and her
husband enmeshed in a corruption scandal; his marriage to Queen Sofía on
rocky terrain; his relationship with a glamorous German businesswoman
under scrutiny. Might the 75-year-old king abdicate in favor of his son,
Crown Prince Felipe, who shocked traditionalists by wedding an
anchorwoman? Bob Colacello gets the latest from the inner circle in
Madrid—and also hears from the lady in question.
Left, by Jaime Reina/AFP/Getty Images; right, © Dafydd Jones.
Nearly every Spanish newspaper, TV channel, and online news site ran the now infamous photograph of Juan Carlos standing proudly in front of a dead elephant, which he had killed on a previous undisclosed big-game shoot. Compounding the embarrassment, four days before the King’s fall, his 13-year-old grandson—the son of his older daughter—had shot himself in the foot during target practice at one of the royal family’s country houses, and police were investigating the incident because in Spain the use of firearms by those under the age of 14 is illegal. This in turn had allowed the press to bring up a family tragedy that had occurred 56 years earlier, when Juan Carlos, then 18, accidentally shot and killed his 14-year-old brother, Alfonso.
It soon came out that the King’s hunting party had included Princess Corinna zu Sayn-Wittgenstein, a glamorous, 46-year-old, twice-divorced German businesswoman based in Monaco, and that she had flown with him on the plane of Mohamed Eyad Kayali, a Syrian-born Saudi deal-maker, who paid for the safari. Although Sayn-Wittgenstein denied any “improper relationship” with the King, it was reported that Queen Sofía, who had flown to Athens Friday, to spend Greek Orthodox Easter with her brother, former king Constantine, was informed of her husband’s fall upon her arrival there, and decided to stick to her plan to return to Madrid on Monday.
The first call for the King to step down in favor of his son, Crown Prince Felipe, came that weekend, when Tomás Gómez, Madrid’s regional Socialist Party leader, told the press, “The moment has arrived for the head of state to decide between his obligations and public responsibilities and an abdication that would allow him to enjoy a different life.” Such a suggestion would have been unheard of a week earlier, and it shocked most Spaniards. Three days later they were stunned again. Leaving the hospital on crutches, Juan Carlos addressed the waiting journalists and TV crews with a statement about the ill-timed safari. “I am very sorry,” he said. “I made a mistake. It won’t happen again.”
From Bad to Worse
Unfortunately for the King, the Botswana fiasco followed by only a few months another messy royal scandal. In November 2011, the Spanish people learned that Iñaki Urdangarín, the husband of the King’s younger daughter, Infanta Cristina, was under investigation for allegedly embezzling millions of euros from his nonprofit sports foundation, the Nóos Institute. A former Olympic handball champion, Urdangarín, who had been given the title Duque de Palma de Mallorca upon marrying Cristina, in 1997, denied all charges. Nevertheless, the royal household announced that Urdangarín would not participate in official family functions while under investigation, and in his annual Christmas address Juan Carlos made a point of stating, “Justice is for everyone.”
On December 28, the royal household published for the first time its earnings and expenses. In 2011, the King had received close to $400,000 from the state, almost evenly divided between salary and expenses; he paid 40 percent income tax on his salary. Crown Prince Felipe received nearly $200,000, and the royal women—Queen Sofía, the Infantas Elena and Cristina, and Felipe’s wife, Princess Letizia—shared some $500,000. The total budget for the royal household, including a staff of about 500, was approximately $11.34 million, a relatively modest sum compared with other European monarchies.
Yet questions remained as to how Juan Carlos had amassed a personal fortune said to be about $2 billion. And the royal lurch toward openness would prove futile as developments in the Nóos imbroglio threatened to ensnare the King, and as the press dug deeper into his private affairs. In February 2012, Urdangarín testified for the first time before Judge José Castro, the Majorca magistrate presiding over the Nóos case. He admitted under questioning that he had defied an order from his father-in-law in 2006 to disassociate himself entirely from the Nóos Institute. Though he resigned as president, he continued for two years to be involved in its activities. His testimony raised new questions concerning the King; for example, if he knew of shady business at Nóos, why didn’t he inform the authorities?
Meanwhile, in a book titled The Solitude of the Queen, Spanish author Pilar Eyre called the King a serial womanizer and alleged that he had even made a pass at Princess Diana while she and Prince Charles were vacationing on King Constantine’s yacht with the Spanish and Greek royal families. Within weeks of the monarch’s apology for the Botswana safari, Spanish Vanity Fair caused a sensation by putting Sayn-Wittgenstein on the June 2012 cover as “The Mysterious Friend of the King.” Lourdes Garzon, the editor in chief, told me, “Everyone more or less knew about this woman, but it was impossible to find anything written about her. Because to write about the monarchy was the biggest taboo in our society.”
Things just kept getting worse. The Palace announced that the King and Queen would not be celebrating their golden wedding anniversary. In February of this year, Diego Torres, Urdangarín’s former business partner, testified that the King’s son-in-law never made a move without Palace approval, and that his wife, Cristina, as an officer of the Nóos Institute, was involved in the running of it. To support his claims, Torres submitted more than 200 e-mails to the court. They revealed that, as early as June 2004, the King had asked Sayn-Wittgenstein to help Urdangarín find a new job, which suggested that her role in royal matters was even larger than suspected. When Urdangarín arrived at the Palma de Mallorca courthouse, he was taunted by protesters shouting, “Down with the monarchy! Down with corruption!” In sworn testimony he insisted, “The royal family did not give its opinion on, advise or authorize the activities of Nóos.” Several weeks later, however, Judge Castro subpoenaed Infanta Cristina—the first time in history that a member of the royal family had been ordered to appear in court.
On March 3, Juan Carlos returned to the hospital for back surgery, his fourth operation in less than a year. The previous week Sayn-Wittgenstein had given an interview to El Mundo. She told investigative reporter Ana Romero that she had met the King nine years earlier, at a shooting party at the Duke of Westminster’s estate in England, and that they had become “close friends.” She further confided that she had performed “sensitive and confidential” assignments for the Spanish government, adding, “These were specific classified matters and I helped for the good of the country.” On March 19, Reuters reported that Félix Sanz Roldán, the head of Spain’s National Intelligence Center, had been questioned by a parliamentary committee “probing whether Corinna zu Sayn-Wittgenstein … had ever benefited from a Spanish security detail or received any payments from the state as a lobbyist for Spanish firms abroad.” In early April, El Mundo alleged that Juan Carlos had secreted in Swiss accounts millions of dollars that he had inherited from his father, Don Juan de Borbón, who had lived in exile during the Franco years (and would have been king had the Generalissimo not chosen his son as his successor instead)