‘Goldfinger’ fraud trial ends in jail for Sir Sean’s lawyers
25 years for trio after probe into star’s house sale
SIR Sean Connery’s lawyers have been handed lengthy prison sentences for tax fraud after a probe sparked by the sale of the actor’s Spanish home.
Luis Juega Garcia, Hector DiazBastien and Ramon Asesio Bolea, along with two others, were also ordered to pay more than £14million in unpaid company duties and fined over offences relating to their own tax returns.
The men were convicted following a long-running trial in Malaga, on Spain’s Costa del Sol.
Garcia was sentenced to nine years and three months in jail after being convicted of four tax crimes.
Diaz-Bastien and Bolea were both handed sentences of seven years and nine months – two years and seven months for each of the three tax crimes for which they were convicted.
Diaz-Bastien was the founder of law firm DiazBastien & Truan which Sir Sean, 86, used when he sold his Marbella home, Casa Malibu, in 1999 – and Bolea and Garcia partners in it.
The house near Puerto Banus was subsequently demolished.
More than 70 flats – which were later sold for an estimated £45million – were put up in its place, despite planning regulations which stipulated that only five flats could be built there.
The deal led to a highprofile police and judicial investigation dubbed Goldfinger, after the famous 1964 James Bond film in which Sir Sean starred.
During the Spanish court probe into the sale, the Edinburgh-born actor was asked embarrassing questions about his alleged links to convicted criminals and his personal finances.
He was quizzed on whether he had offshore companies, had ever given gifts to land registry workers as well as the nature of his relationship with corrupt former mayors of Marbella jailed for crimes including embezzlement and fraud.
In 2014, Sir Sean was told that he would not face trial.
However, last November his French-born wife, Micheline Roquebrune, was informed that she would face questions in court. A date for her trial – which the Spanish authorities decided to hold separately from that of the 18 defendants who took the witness stand in January – is expected to be set shortly.
Prosecutors have called for Roquebrune to be jailed for two and a half years and fined more than £16million if she is found guilty.
They allege that she aided and abetted a complex operation to defraud the Spanish Treasury out of £5.5million in 2006 through a Spanish company called By The Sea. She previously said when allegations of money laundering first surfaced at the start of the Goldfinger judicial probe that ‘these allegations of money-laundering are nonsense’.
She added: ‘We have nothing to do with this. We sold the property and that is it.’
It is understood that the Marbella court investigating Roquetheir brune has received a reply to an official legal letter sent to her home in the Bahamas informing her of its trial decision – but has yet to translate it.
The lawyers – whose offences relate to failure to disclose profits – were informed of fate in a 575-page written sentence. They are expected to launch appeals and will not face being locked up before that process has concluded.
Sir Sean named the law firm implicated in the Goldfinger case when he replied to an affidavit sent to him by a Marbella court while he was still under investigation.
He said: ‘I have been informed by my Spanish lawyers, the law firm Diaz-Bastien & Truan, that I have been named as a party in criminal proceedings in Spain.’
He also described Hector Diaz-Bastien as ‘my lawyer’ in legal papers.
Corrupt former Marbella mayor Julian Munoz and six former town councillors are also among those who have been convicted and given prison sentences following the Goldfinger investigation. Munoz was sentenced to one year in prison for a planning crime.
‘We have nothing to do with this’