Juan Carlos I ‘used lover to hide low-tax property deals’
THE former king of Spain, Juan Carlos I, used his alleged lover – a German princess – to buy multiple overseas properties due to her tax residence in Monaco, according to claims she made in a leaked audio recording.
In a 2015 conversation with a former Spanish police officer in London, Princess Corinna zu Sayn-wittgenstein alleged that the king’s lawyers put her name on overseas properties without her permission.
The 53-year-old, who obtained her title from her second marriage, claimed that Juan Carlos I also held Swiss bank accounts in the name of his cousin, Alvaro Orleans de Borbón.
The allegations, published by the Spanish newspapers El Español and OK Diario, are the latest to spring from the long-reputed relationship.
The alleged 10-year affair has never been officially confirmed, with Princess Corinna describing herself in 2013 as a “close friend” of the monarch.
In the recordings, she said she was living a “nightmare” because the king had put properties in Morocco and elsewhere into her name, which, following the end of their relationship, he then wanted transferred to his cousin.
“But if I do it, it is money laundering,” she says in a recording transcribed by El Español. “They are putting me under tremendous pressure to return these things, but if I do it I am breaking the law and I could go to jail”.
She claimed the properties had been put in her name “because I reside in Monaco”, where such assets did not have to be publicly declared.
The Spanish palace did not comment on yesterday’s reports. Alvaro Orleans de Borbón has denied the claims.