Spain’s Princess Cristina not guilty in tax fraud case
But her husband is sentenced to more than six years in jail
MADRID // Spain’s Princess Cristina was found not guilty in a tax fraud case yesterday, while her husband was convicted and sentenced to more than six years in prison.
A panel of judges ordered Cristina, the sister of King Felipe VI, to pay nearly €265,000 (Dh1.04 million) in fines because she indirectly benefited from the crime. Her husband, Inaki Urdangarin, was found guilty of evading taxes, fraud and other criminal charges.
He was sentenced to six years and three months in prison in a decision that can be appealed to the supreme court.
The trial centred on accusations that Urdangarin used his former title, Duke of Palma, to embezzle about €6m in public funds for a nonprofit organisation, the Noos Institute.
It organised conferences and sports-related events and was run with a partner, Diego Torres, who was sentenced to eight and a half years in jail in yesterday’s ruling by a provincial court in Palma de Mallorca, in the Balearic Islands. Among the companies they used was Aizoon, a property consultancy jointly owned by Cristina and Urdangarin.
A lawyer with the princess’s defence team, Miquel Roca, said she was “satisfied for the acknowledgement of her innocence” but that she was still convinced that her husband was not guilty.
“If we believed in the judicial system when the princess was made to sit in the dock, I think that citizens can trust in it when she’s absolved,” Mr Roca said. A spokesman for the royal household said that the family respected the decision of the court. There was no comment from King Felipe nor Queen Letizia, who received news of the ruling during a visit to a museum in Madrid with Hungarian president Janos Ader.